desperate fellow, and had been
repeatedly outlawed, should attempt to run his sloop aground. About nine
o'clock A.M. they discovered a sail which answered the description of
Hatteraick's vessel, chased her, and, after repeated signals to her to
show colours and bring-to, fired upon her. The chase then showed Hamburgh
colours and returned the fire; and a running fight was maintained for
three hours, when, just as the lugger was doubling the Point of Warroch,
they observed that the main-yard was shot in the slings, and that the
vessel was disabled. It was not in the power of the man-of-war's men for
some time to profit by this circumstance, owing to their having kept too
much in shore for doubling the headland. After two tacks, they
accomplished this, and observed the chase on fire and apparently
deserted. The fire having reached some casks of spirits, which were
placed on the deck, with other combustibles, probably on purpose, burnt
with such fury that no boats durst approach the vessel, especially as her
shotted guns were discharging one after another by the heat. The captain
had no doubt whatever that the crew had set the vessel on fire and
escaped in their boats. After watching the conflagration till the ship
blew up, his Majesty's sloop, the Shark, stood towards the Isle of Man,
with the purpose of intercepting the retreat of the smugglers, who,
though they might conceal themselves in the woods for a day or two, would
probably take the first opportunity of endeavouring to make for this
asylum. But they never saw more of them than is above narrated.

Such was the account given by William Pritchard, master and commander of
his Majesty's sloop of war, Shark, who concluded by regretting deeply
that he had not had the happiness to fall in with the scoundrels who had
had the impudence to fire on his Majesty's flag, and with an assurance
that, should he meet Mr. Dirk Hatteraick in any future cruise, he would
not fail to bring him into port under his stern, to answer whatever might
be alleged against him.

As, therefore, it seemed tolerably certain that the men on board the
lugger had escaped, the death of Kennedy, if he fell in with them in the
woods, when irritated by the loss of their vessel and by the share he had
in it, was easily to be accounted for. And it was not improbable that to
such brutal tempers, rendered desperate by their own circumstances, even
the murder of the child, against whose father, as having become