an ourselves, as she lay
heaving and rolling sluggishly, with her covering-boards awash and the
sea sweeping her decks from stem to taffrail at every plunge, and the
wreck of her foremast towing under her bows. There was not a soul
visible on board her. When she first engaged us her decks had appeared
to be crowded with men, but now most of them were either killed or
wounded, and the few who had escaped seemed to have flung themselves
down exhausted, for they had all disappeared. As for the craft herself,
it was now only when she rose heavily upon the ridges of the swell that
we could see her hull at all; and every plunge that she took into a
hollow threatened to be her last. Yet she lingered, as though reluctant
to leave the brilliant sunshine and the warm, strong breeze; lingered
until I began to wonder whether she would not after all remain afloat, a
water-logged wreck; and then, all in a moment, her stern rose high in
the air, revealing her shattered rudder and stern-post, and with a long,
slow, diving movement, she plunged forward, like a sounding whale, and
silently vanished in a little swirl of water. We at once bore up for
the spot where she had disappeared,--finding it easily by the torn and
splintered fragments of wreckage that came floating up to the surface,--
but her crew went down with her, to a man; for although we cruised about
the spot for fully half an hour, we never saw even so much as a dead
body come to the surface.

And so ended that terror of the seas, the _Guerrilla_, with her
bloodthirsty pirate crew; and with her destruction ended the feud that
had been thrust upon me by one of the most fiendish monsters in human
form that ever sailed the ocean. It may perhaps seem to the reader a
cold-blooded deed on our part to remain passively by and calmly watch
the passing of those wretches to their account; but in reality it was an
act of mercy, for their end was at least swift; whereas, had we saved
any of them, it would only have been that they might terminate their
career upon the gallows.

Meanwhile, the brig had dropped some six miles to leeward during the
fight, and her crew had made the best of the opportunity by endeavouring
to get some jury-spars aloft. The time, however, was too short for
that, and when we ran down to them they were still in the thick of their
work. But they had now had enough of fighting, for when I again hailed
to ask if they surrendered, they at once replied in the a