cherous Landais with oaths and
imprecations. We made out the Alliance with a full head of canvas, black
and sharp, between us and the moon. Smoke hung above her rail. Getting
over against the signal fires blazing on Flamborough Head, she wore ship
and stood across our bows, the midshipman on the forecastle singing out
to her, by the commodore's orders, to lay the enemy by the board. There
was no response.

"Do you hear us?" yelled Mr. Linthwaite.

"Ay, ay," came the reply; and with it the smoke broke from her and the
grape and canister swept our forecastle. Then the Alliance sailed away,
leaving brave Mr. Caswell among the many Landais had murdered.

The ominous clank of the chain pumps beat a sort of prelude to what
happened next. The gunner burst out of the hatch with blood running down
his face, shouting that the Richard was sinking, and yelling for quarter
as he made for the ensign-staff on the poop, for the flag was shot away.
Him the commodore felled with a pistol-butt. At the gunner's heels were
the hundred and fifty prisoners we had taken, released by the master at
arms. They swarmed out of the bowels of the ship like a horde of
Tartars, unkempt and wild and desperate with fear, until I thought that
the added weight on the scarce-supported deck would land us all in the
bilges. Words fail me when I come to describe the frightful panic of
these creatures, frenzied by the instinct of self-preservation. They
surged hither and thither as angry seas driven into a pocket of a
storm-swept coast. They trampled rough-shod over the moaning heaps of
wounded and dying, and crowded the crews at the guns, who were powerless
before their numbers. Some fought like maniacs, and others flung
themselves into the sea.

Those of us who had clung to hope lost it then. Standing with my back
to the mast, beating them off with a pike, visions of an English
prison-ship, of an English gallows, came before me. I counted the
seconds until the enemy's seamen would be pouring through our ragged
ports. The seventh and last time, and we were beaten, for we had not men
enough left on our two decks to force them down again. Yes,--I shame to
confess it--the heart went clean out of me, and with that the pain
pulsed and leaped in my head like a devil unbound. At a turn of the hand
I should have sunk to the boards, had not a voice risen strong and clear
above that turmoil, compelling every man to halt trembling in his steps.

"Cast off, cast off!