re all sputtering and burning so that he ran to and fro
in a cloud of sparks and smoke like that Evil One whom he professed to
admire. He realized, no doubt, that this was likely to be his last
stand. The inferno which he was so fond of counterfeiting, fairly yawned
at his feet.

And now the sloops let go their anchors while from astern of them
appeared the three boats of the assailants. They steered wide of each
other to seek different parts of the pirate brig and so divide
Blackbeard's force. The boats of Colonel Stuart and Lieutenant Maynard
were racing for the honor of first place alongside. Blackbeard trained
two guns on them, filled with grape and chain-shot, and one boat was
shattered but it swam long enough for the cheering men to pull it to the
brig and toss their grapples to the rail which was inclined quite close
to the water. They were in the surf which broke against the ship, but
this was a mere trifle.

Most of them went up the side like cats, leaping for the chains and
dead-eyes, slashing at the nettings, swinging by a rope's end, or
digging their toes in a crack of a gun-port. Forward they were pouring
over the bowsprit, vaulting like acrobats from the anchor stocks, or
swarming up the stays. It seemed beyond belief that they could gain
footing on the decks with Blackbeard's demons stabbing and hacking and
shooting at them, but in such manner as this was many a great sea fight
won in the brave days of old.

Lieutenant Maynard gained his lodgment in the bows amid a swirl of
pirates who tried to pen him in front of the forecastle house. But his
tars of the Royal Navy were accustomed to close quarters and they
straightway made room for themselves. Chest to chest and hand to hand
they hewed their way toward the waist of the ship where Colonel Stuart
raged like the braw, bonny Highlander that he was. Almost at the same
time, the third boat had made fast under the jutting stern gallery and
its twenty men were piling in through the cabin windows like so many
human projectiles.

In the _King George_ brigantine, Captain Jonathan Wellsby fidgeted and
gnawed his lip, with a telescope at his eye, while he watched the
conflict in which he could scarce distinguish friend from foe. He could
see Blackbeard charge aft to rally his men and then whirl back to lunge
into the melee where towered Colonel Stuart's tall figure. The powder
smoke from pistols and muskets drifted in a thin blue haze. Joe
Hawkridge was fairly