o board,
if they can take their opponents by surprise, have greatly the
advantage. The Frenchmen reckoned on this, and were not disappointed.
A strong party had made good their footing on the brig's deck, when the
first lieutenant, who was a powerful man, seizing a cutlass, with some
of the best of the crew, threw himself upon them. So desperate was the
onslaught he made that none could withstand it. The Frenchmen fired
their pistols, by which several of the English, who had not one loaded,
fell; and the gallant lieutenant was among others hit. Still his wound
did not stop his progress.

The Frenchmen retreated inch by inch, throwing themselves over the
brig's bulwarks into their own vessel. True Blue and his party had been
equally successful forward, and now not a Frenchman remained on the
brig's deck. In another moment, he with his companions had leaped down
on that of the lugger, and, though the French far outnumbered the
British, drove them all abaft the foremast, where they found themselves
attacked by another portion of the brig's crew, headed by two of her
officers.

The first lieutenant had carried her aft, and the French, seeing that
all was lost, threw down their arms and cried out for quarter. It was
instantly given, and in ten minutes from the time the first shot was
fired, the capture of the lugger was complete.

As True Blue looked along her decks, he thought he recognised her
appearance. "Hurrah!" he shouted. "Why, she's the very craft, the
_Vengeur_, we took in the Seine."

So she proved. From one of the prisoners, who spoke English, True Blue
learned that, soon after the boats had left her for the frigate, the
_Vengeur_ had been attacked by a large armed lugger, which, however, she
beat off; that then a number of boats with soldiers in them surrounded
her, and that, after a furious action had been carried on for some time,
chiefly with musketry, and numbers of the British had been killed or
wounded, Sir Sydney had yielded.

Between twenty or thirty officers and men only had been landed at Rouen,
the rest having fallen. The greater number were imprisoned at Rouen;
but the French Government had considered Sir Sydney as a prisoner of
state, and, with his secretary and servant, he had been placed in the
tower of the Temple at Paris.

In the afternoon, the brig and her prize ran up Plymouth Sound; and as
she had killed and wounded and prisoners to land, and repairs to make
good, instead of