no d--d
slouching lubber, and knew a yardarm from a rattan cane."

Finally, about six bells of the watch, the stranger wore ship and bore
down across our bows, hoisting English colours, at sight of which I could
scarce forbear a cheer. At this instant, Captain Griggs woke to the fact
that his helm was still lashed, and bestowing a hearty kick on his
prostrate quartermaster stuck fast to the pitchy seams of the deck, took
the wheel himself, and easing off before the wind to bring the vessels
broadside to broadside, commanded that the guns be shooed to the muzzle,
an order that was barely executed before the brigantine came within close
range. Aboard her was all order and readiness; the men at her guns fuse
in hand, an erect and pompous figure of a man, in a cocked hat, on the
break of her poop. He raised his hand, two puffs of white smoke darted
out, and I heard first the shrieking of shot, the broadside came
crashing round us, one tearing through the mainsail below me, another
mangling two men in the waist of our schooner, and Griggs gave the order
to touch off. But two of his guns answered, one of which had been so
gorged with shot that it burst in a hundred pieces and sent the fellow
with the swab to perdition, and such a hell of blood and confusion as
resulted is indescribable. I saw Griggs in a wild fit of rage force the
helm down, the schooner flying into the wind. And by this time, the
brigantine having got round and presented her port battery, raked us at a
bare hundred yards, and I was the first to guess by the tilting forward
of the mast that our hull was hit between wind and water, and was fast
settling by the bow.

The schooner was sinking like a gallipot.

That day, with the sea flashing blue and white in the sun, I saw men go
to death with a curse upon their lips and a fever in their eyes, with
murder and defiance of God's holy will in their hearts. Overtaken in
bestiality, like the judgment of Nineveh, five and twenty disappeared
from beneath me, and I had scarce the time to throw off my cutlass before
I, too, was engulfed. So expired the Black Moll.

RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill

Volume 4.

XIX. A Man of Destiny
XX. A Sad Home-coming
XXI. The Gardener's Cottage
XXII. On the Road
XXIII. London Town
XXIV. Castle Yard
XXV. The Rescue

CHAPTER XIX

A MAN OF DESTINY

I was picked up and thrown into the brigantine's long-boat with a head
and stomach full