ate's after-ports, and the next instant poor Gipples was spinning
along the deck, shrieking out with terror and pain. Out of all the
crew, in spite of the heavy fire to which the corvette had been exposed,
he and another poor fellow were the only men hit. This shot seemed a
parting one of revenge. As Captain Brine watched the receding frigate,
he could scarcely persuade himself that she would not again bear down
upon him. On she stood--farther and farther off she got, till her hull
sank beneath the horizon, and her courses, and then her topsails, and
finally her topgallant-sails and royals, were hid from sight.

Fid, Hartland, and others carried poor Gipples below. Wonderful to
relate, when the surgeon came to examine him, he pronounced his wound,
though bad, not of necessity mortal, and thought that under favourable
circumstances he might possibly do well. No one could have tended him
more carefully and kindly than True Blue and his other old messmates;
and he showed more gratitude for their attention than might have been
expected.

Scarcely had the enemy disappeared, when the lookout at the masthead
reported a large ship on the lee beam. Every exertion that could be
made was applied to get the _Gannet_ into a condition to chase, and in
an hour's time, under a wide spread of canvas she was standing after the
stranger.

The latter appeared not to be a man-of-war, as she made off towards the
Island of Guadaloupe, then dead to leeward. As she had so far the
start, it became a question whether she could be brought to before she
ran herself on shore. Still the _Gannet_, it was soon seen, sailed
faster than she did, and Guadaloupe was scarcely visible on the horizon.

The breeze freshened, the corvette tore with foam-covered bows through
the blue glittering ocean. At 11 a.m. she had made sail. By 3 p.m. she
had got the stranger within range of her long guns.

"She is remarkably like an English ship, and from the way she is
handled, I think she must be a prize, with a small crew on board,"
observed the first to the second lieutenant.

After a few shots, the stranger's main-topsail-yard was shot away, when
she brought to, and proved to be the _Swift_, a British merchant ship,
bound to Barbadoes, a prize to the frigate the _Gannet_ had just beaten
off. Mr Nott, with ten men, including True Blue and Tim Fid, were sent
on board to work her; and as, instead of deserving the name of the
_Swift_, she was more worth