h
seamen were about, they, led by their gallant young Captain, who was
closely followed by True Blue, had leaped on her deck and were driving
all before them.

A tall French officer, evidently a first-rate swordsman, stood his
ground, and rallied a party round him. He encountered Sir Henry, who,
attacked by another Frenchman, was on the point of being cut down, when
True Blue with his trusty cutlass came to his aid, and turned the fury
of the Frenchman against himself.

There was science against strength and pluck. True Blue saw that all
ordinary rules of defence and attack must be let aside; so, throwing up
the Frenchman's sword with a back stroke of his cutlass, he sprang in on
him, seized him by the throat, and, as he pushed him back, with another
cut brought him to the deck.

The loss of their champion still more disheartened the French, who now
gave way fore and aft. Numbers had been cut down--some jumped
overboard, but the greater portion ran below and sang out lustily for
quarter.

Strange to say, not a man of the _Rover_ was hurt, while nearly fifty
Frenchmen and Spaniards were killed and wounded.

The moment the schooner's flag was hauled down, the Spanish boats made
off; nor did they stop till they had disappeared within some harbour on
the coast.

"I suppose," said Gipples, looking at the swarthy Spanish soldiers with
no friendly eye, "though these chaps may have liked to eat us if they
had caught us, we ain't obliged to eat them."

"That will be as the Captain likes," answered Tim Fid. "Perhaps he'll
not think them wholesome at this time of the year, and let them go."

A very few days were sufficient to refit the _Rover_, and to store and
provision her ready for sea. This time, however, she was ordered to
cruise along the coasts of San Domingo and Porto Rico, towards the
Leeward Islands.

At length she ran farther south, and came off the harbour of
Point-a-Pitre, in the Island of Guadaloupe.

The time allowed for the cruise was very nearly expired, and Sir Henry
was naturally desirous of doing something more than had yet been
accomplished. The saucy little English brig poked her nose close into
the French harbour one morning, and there discovered several vessels at
anchor close under a strong fort.

"We must be on the watch for some of these gentlemen when they come out,
and capture them," thought Sir Henry as the brig steered away again from
the land.

True Blue had, however, fixed hi