of weapons had been supplied by their clasp knives, to which
the Irish had also resorted, and deadly wounds were given and received.

McDermot, the Irish leader, had just gained the mastery of Debriseau,
bestriding his body and strangling him, with his fingers so fixed in his
throat that they seemed deeply to have entered into the flesh. The
Guernsey man was black in the face, and his eyes starting from their
sockets: in a few minutes he would have been no more, when the mast in
the hands of the boatswain descended upon the Irishman's head, and
dashed out his brains. At the same moment, one of the Irishmen darted
his knife into the side of Seymour, who fell, streaming with his own
blood. The fate of their officer, which excited the attention of the
seamen, and the fall of McDermot, on the opposite side, to whose
assistance the Irish immediately hastened, added to the suspension of
their powers from want of breath, produced a temporary cessation of
hostilities. Dragging away their killed and wounded, the panting
antagonists retreated to the distance of a few yards from each other,
tired, but not satisfied with their revenge, and fully intending to
resume the strife as soon as they had recovered the power. But a very
few seconds had elapsed, when they were interrupted by a third party;
and the clattering of horses' hoofs was immediately followed by the
appearance of a female on horseback, who, galloping past the Irishmen,
reined up her steed, throwing him on his haunches, in his full career,
in the space between the late contending parties.

"'Tis the daughter of the House!" exclaimed the Irishmen, in
consternation.

There wanted no such contrast as the scene described to add lustre to
her beauty, or to enhance her charms. Fair as the snow-drift, her
cheeks mantling with the roseate blush of exercise and animation--her
glossy hair, partly uncurled, and still played with by the amorous
breeze, hanging in long ringlets down her neck--her eye, which
alternately beamed with pity or flashed with indignation, as it was
directed to one side or the other--her symmetry of form, which the close
riding-dress displayed--her graceful movements, as she occasionally
restrained her grey palfrey, who fretted to resume his speed, all
combined with her sudden and unexpected appearance to induce the
boatswain and his men to consider her as superhuman.

"She's an angel of light!" muttered the boatswain to himself.

She turned to t