her light would facilitate the passage of the
boats across the bar, after the accomplishment of which the plan was to
endeavour to discover the position of the vessel that we were after--or,
failing her, any other craft that might be in the river--and then ambush
the boats until the moon had gone down. We gave the boats a cheer as
they pulled away, and watched them until they vanished in the shadowy
obscurity inshore; after which, as we expected to see nothing more of
them until daylight, the watch was piped down, and going below I turned
in. The night, however, was intensely hot, and the atmosphere of the
midshipmen's berth intolerably stuffy. I therefore slept but poorly,
and was up and down, at intervals of about an hour, all through the
night, listening for the sound of firing, and hoping that perchance the
reflection of gun-flashes on the clouds might indicate that the boats
had found their quarry. Once or twice, about three o'clock in the
morning, some of us who, like myself, were on the qui vive, thought we
caught the muffled sound of distant firing coming off to us on the damp
night breeze, but the everlasting thunder of the surf on the sand a mile
away was so loud that we might easily have been deceived. That
something important, however, was happening ashore was evident, for
about this time we saw the reflection of a brilliant glare in the sky
which lasted nearly an hour, and then gradually died down.

At seven o'clock the next morning all our doubts were set at rest by the
appearance of two craft--a slashing brig and a very smart-looking little
schooner--coming out over the bar with the _Shark's_ boats in tow; and
ten minutes later they rounded-to and anchored close to us. We now had
an opportunity to take a good look at our prizes, and it needed no
second glance to assure us that both were perfectly superb examples of
the shipbuilder's art. Long, low, and extraordinarily beamy, they
carried spars big enough for craft of twice their tonnage, upon which
they spread an area of canvas that made some of us stare in amazement,
and which, combined with their exquisitely perfect lines, gave them a
speed that enabled them to defy pursuit. The _Dona Inez_, as the brig
was named, was a craft of three hundred and eighty-six tons register,
and drew only ten feet of water aft; while the _Francesca_--the
schooner,--on a tonnage of one hundred and twenty, drew only six feet.
That they had been built for the express p