ng badly in our
direction, forced his way through the crowd, and, perhaps regarding me
as the chief mischief-maker, levelled a pistol at my head and fired. I
felt the ball graze my scalp, but at the same instant my handspike
descended upon the unhappy man's head. I saw the blood spurt out over
his face, and down he went. This proved sufficient. The Frenchmen
nearest me threw down their weapons and cried that they surrendered.
The cry was taken up by the rest, and the brigantine was won.

The first thing now to be done was to see to the wounded. The carnage
had been very great in proportion to the numbers engaged, and our men
had no sooner sheathed their weapons than they went to work among the
ghastly prostrate forms to separate the wounded from the dead. This
task was soon completed, and it was then discovered that our loss had
not been nearly so great as I had feared; the dead amounting to eleven,
and the wounded to nineteen, three of whom were dangerously injured.
Our own dead and wounded were carefully removed to the schooner, and
then,--the unwounded Frenchmen having been driven below and securely
confined in the hold,--the skipper put me in charge of the prize, with a
crew of twenty men, and the two craft made sail in company, in pursuit
of the merchantman, which was now hull-down in the south-western
quarter. The moment that the two craft were clear of each other, and
the sails trimmed, I set my people to work to convey the wounded
Frenchmen below to the cabin, where, the vessel by good luck being
provided with a surgeon, they were quickly attended to. When this was
done it was found that the French loss totalled up to no less than
twenty-seven killed and forty-four wounded, out of a complement of one
hundred men with which she had commenced the engagement. She was a
heavily-manned vessel, for, in addition to the number already given, she
had thirty men on board the prize.

Having seen the wounded carried below, the dead thrown overboard, and
the decks washed down, I had an opportunity to look about me a bit, and
take stock of the noble craft that we had captured. She turned out to
be the _Tigre_ of Nantes, thirty-four days out, during which she had
captured only one prize, namely, the ship of which we were now in
pursuit. She was a brand-new vessel, measuring three hundred and
seventy-six tons, oak-built, coppered, and copper fastened; of immense
beam, and very shallow, drawing only ten feet six inch