even one of the two midshipmen on board was hunted like a
rat through the ship, killed, and thrown overboard. The only officers
spared were the master, the gunner, and one midshipman.

Having captured the ship, the mutineers were puzzled how to proceed.
Every man-of-war on the station, they knew, would be swiftly on their
track. Every British port was sealed to them. They would be pursued
by a retribution which would neither loiter nor slumber. On the open
sea there was no safety for mutineers. They turned the head of the
_Hermione_ towards the nearest Spanish port, La Guayra, and, reaching
it, surrendered the ship to the Spanish authorities, saying they had
turned their officers adrift in the jolly-boat. The Spaniards were not
disposed to scrutinise too closely the story. A transaction which put
into their hands a fine British frigate was welcomed with rapture. The
British admiral in command of the station sent in a flag of truce with
the true account of the mutiny, and called upon the Spanish
authorities, as a matter of honour, to surrender the _Hermione_, and
hand over for punishment the murderers who had carried it off. The
appeal, however, was wasted.

The _Hermione_, a handsome ship of 715 tons, when under the British
flag, was armed with thirty-two 12-pounders, and had a complement of
220 men. The Spaniards cut new ports in her, increased her broadsides
to forty-four guns, and gave her a complement, including a detachment
of soldiers and artillerymen, of nearly 400 men. She thus became the
most formidable ship carrying the Spanish flag in West Indian waters.

But the _Hermione_, under its new flag, had a very anxious existence.
It became a point of honour with every British vessel on the station to
look out for the ship which had become the symbol of mutiny, and make a
dash at her, no matter what the odds. The brutal murders which
attended the mutiny shocked even the forecastle imagination, while the
British officers were naturally eager to destroy the ship which
represented revolt against discipline. Both fore and aft, too, the
fact that what had been a British frigate was now carrying the flag of
Spain was resented with a degree of exasperation which assured to the
_Hermione_, under its new name and flag, a very warm time if it came
under the fire of a British ship. The Spaniards kept the _Hermione_
for just two years, but kept her principally in port, as the moment she
showed her nose in the o