the other tack and sailed back, receiving another
broadside through her rigging and answering with her starboard guns.
Then for a time the din was deafening. The brig backed her main-yards
and sent broadside after broadside into the hull of the old craft. But
it was not until the eighth had gone that Captain Bunce noticed through
the smoke that the pirates were not firing. The smoke from the burning
canvas port-coverings had deluded him. He ordered a cessation. Fully
forty solid shot had torn through that old hull near the water-line,
and not a man could now be seen on her deck.

"Out with the boats, Mr. Duncan," he said; "they're drunk or crazy, but
they're the men we want. Capture them."

"Suppose they run, sir--suppose they take to their boats and get into
the woods--shall we follow?"

"No, not past the beach--not into an ambush."

The four boat-loads of men which put off from the brig found nothing
but a deserted deck on the sinking bark and two empty boats hauled up
on the beach. The pirates were in the woods, undoubtedly, having kept
the bark between themselves and the brig as they pulled ashore. While
the blue-jackets clustered around the bows of their boats and watched
nervously the line of forest up the beach, from which bullets might
come at any time, the two lieutenants conferred for a few moments, and
had decided to put back, when a rattling chorus of pistol reports
sounded from the depths of the woods. It died away; then was heard a
crashing of bush and branch, and out upon the sands sprang a figure--a
long, weird figure in black frock of clerical cut. Into their midst it
sped with mighty bounds, and sinking down, lifted a glad face to the
heavens with the groaning utterance: "O God, I thank thee. Protect me,
gentlemen--protect me from those wicked men."

"What is it? Who are you?" asked Mr. Duncan. "Were they shooting at
you?"

"Yes, at me, who never harmed a fly. They would have killed me. My name
is Todd. Oh, such suffering! But you will protect me? You are English
officers. You are not pirates and murderers."

"But what has happened? Do you live around here?"

It took some time for Mr. Todd to quiet down sufficiently to tell his
story coherently. He was an humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord.
He had gleaned among the poorest of the native population in the
outskirts of Rio de Janeiro until his health suffered, and had taken
passage home in a passenger-ship, which, ten days out, was capt