hearty cheer, and went back to their guns; and a quarter of an hour
later the brig rounded-to within biscuit-toss to windward of us, giving
us her larboard broadside as she did so.

This was the beginning of a regular set-to, hammer and tongs, between
us, the French fighting with the utmost courage and determination, and
playing havoc with our rigging, which they cut up so severely that half
a dozen of our people were kept busy aloft knotting and splicing. At
length, however, when the fight had thus been raging for a full hour,
with heavy loss on both sides, tacking suddenly under cover of the smoke
of our starboard broadside, we shot across the brig's stern, raking her
with a double-shotted broadside from our larboard guns, which had the
effect of bringing both her masts down by the run, rendering her a wreck
and unmanageable; and we now felt that she was ours.

But we were reckoning without our host--or rather, without the second
stranger, whom we had been altogether too busy to give a thought to. As
the smoke of our guns blew away to leeward, and we prepared to tack
again preparatory to passing once more athwart the brig's stern, I got a
full and clear view of the stranger, who--approaching us from to
windward--had hitherto been hidden from us by the brig and by the smoke
of our combined cannonade. She was less than half a mile distant from
us, and was at the moment in the very act of taking in her studding-
sails. She was a brigantine, and a single glance at her sufficed to
assure me that she was the _Guerrilla_, and that at last the feud
between Morillo and myself was to be fought out to the bitter end. I
had long ago prepared a red swallow-tailed burgee, such as the pirate
had dared me to exhibit, and I immediately gave orders to hoist it at
our fore royal masthead. The flag had scarcely reached the truck when I
saw a _black_ flag flutter out over the other brigantine's rail and go
soaring aloft to her gaff-end. Morillo had evidently recognised my
challenge, and was prompt to answer it.

Sweeping under the brig's stern again, at a distance of only a few
fathoms, I hailed, asking whether they surrendered; but a pistol-shot,
which flew close past my ear, was their only reply, so we gave them our
starboard broadside, and then wore round to meet our new antagonist,
leaving the brig meanwhile to her own devices.

I am of opinion that Morillo must have had a very shrewd suspicion as to
our identity long befo