elves was all but knocked to
scrap iron, and their ports blown into one yawning gap. Indeed, we did
not have to be told that sides and stanchions had been carried away, for
the deck trembled and teetered under us as we dragged 'Scolding Sairy'
from her stand in the larboard waist, clearing a lane for her between the
bodies. Our feet slipped and slipped as we hove, and burning bits of
sails and splinters dropping from aloft fell unheeded on our heads and
shoulders. With the energy of desperation I was bending to the pull,
when the Malay in front of me sank dead across the tackle. But, ere I
could touch him, he was tenderly lifted aside, and a familiar figure
seized the rope where the dead man's hands had warmed it. Truly, the
commodore was everywhere that night.

"Down to the surgeon with you, Richard!" he cried. "I will look to the
battery."

Dazed, I put my hand to my hair to find it warm and wringing wet. When I
had been hit, I knew not. But I shook my head, for the very notion of
that cockpit turned my stomach. The blood was streaming from a gash in
his own temple, to which he gave no heed, and stood encouraging that
panting line until at last the gun was got across and hooked to the
ring-bolts of its companion that lay shattered there. "Serve her with
double-headed, my lads," he shouted, "and every shot into the
Englishman's mainmast!"

"Ay, ay, sir," came the answer from every man of that little remnant.

The Serapis, too, was now beginning to blaze aloft, and choking
wood-smoke eddied out of the Richard's hold and mingled with the powder
fumes. Then the enemy's fire abreast us seemed to lull, and Mr. Stacey
mounted the bulwarks, and cried out: "You have cleared their decks, my
hearties!" Aloft, a man was seen to clamber from our mainyard into the
very top of the Englishman, where he threw a hand-grenade, as I thought,
down her main hatch. An instant after an explosion came like a, clap of
thunder in our faces, and a great quadrant of light flashed as high as
the 'Serapis's' trucks, and through a breach in her bulwarks I saw men
running with only the collars of their shirts upon their naked bodies.

'Twas at this critical moment, when that fearful battle once more was
won, another storm of grape brought the spars about our heads, and that
name which we dreaded most of all was spread again. As we halted in
consternation, a dozen round shot ripped through our unengaged side, and
a babel of voices hailed the trea