ist and go with them. If I
should take my brother in a French privateer, after he had sailed
willingly with them, I would hang him immediately."' Perhaps at this
point the boy began to fear opposing Lyde as much as attacking all the
Frenchmen, for he now consented to help, and was told that if he would
knock down the man at the helm, all the others should be Lyde's affair.
The _sang-froid_ of the ensuing conversation is remarkable. 'Saith the
boy, "If you be sure to overcome them, how many do you count to kill?" I
answered that I intended to kill three of them. Then the boy replied,
"Why three, and no more?" I answered that I would kill three for three
of our men that died in Prison when I was there.' Lyde went on to
express a hope that some day a 'Man-of-War or Fireship' will try to
avenge 'the Death of those four hundred men that died in the same Prison
of Dinan.' But the boy's fears found the present scheme too merciful,
and he protested, 'Four alive would be too many for us.'

The attack was made when two Frenchmen were asleep in the cabin. 'I went
softly aft into the cabin, and put my back against the bulkhead, and
took the iron crow and held it with both my hands in the middle of it,
and put my legs to shorten myself, because the cabin was very low. But
he that being nighest to me, hearing me, opened his eyes, and
perceiving my intent and upon what account I was coming, he endeavoured
to rise to make resistance against me, but I prevented him by a blow
upon his forehead which mortally wounded him.' The other man received a
heavy blow as he was rising, 'very fiercely endeavouring to come against
me.... The master, lying in his cabin on my right hand, rose and sat in
his cabin, and seeing what I had done, he called me by most insulting
names.' But 'having his eyes every way,' Lyde turned on him with a blow
which made him 'lie as still as if he had been dead.'

He then went to 'attack the two men who were at the pump, where they
continued pumping without hearing or knowing what I had done;' but one
of the wounded men crawled out of the cabin, and when the men at the
pump 'saw his blood running out of the hole in his forehead, they came
running aft to me, grinding their teeth as if they would have eaten me;
but I met them as they came within the steeridge door, and struck at
them; but the steeridge not being above four foot high, I could not have
a full blow at them, whereupon they fended off the blows, took hold of