that they are as sure of prize-money with you as if it was
already divided, they will soon spread the news, and we shall not be long
before we fill up.'

"So it turned out; luckily, among the first haul that Cochrane made, there
were two or three of the _Speedy's_ old crew. I took them in hand, and
told them that so far from being in disgrace any longer, Lord Cochrane had
a commission to take a month's cruise off the Azores before joining the
fleet, and that that job alone was likely to fill every man's pockets. In
a very short time we had the pick of the best men in Plymouth, and sailed
in the middle of January, 1805, for the Azores. Instead of making straight
for the islands, Cochrane ran down the coast of Spain and then worked up
towards the Azores, thereby putting us on the track of any Spanish vessels
bound from the West Indies to Cadiz. A day or two later we captured a
large ship bound from Havana laden with a valuable cargo. Having learned
from the prisoners that the ship was part of a large convoy we proceeded
on our course, and a week later captured another even more valuable prize,
as she contained in addition to the usual cargo some diamonds and ingots
of gold and silver.

"Two days later we took another, the richest of the three, having on board
a large quantity of dollars; and the next day caught a fine privateer with
more dollars on board. These four prizes were sent in to Plymouth. As we
only had a month this brought the work to a close, and we returned to
Plymouth. We had a serious adventure on the way back, for in heavy weather
we fell in with three French line-of-battle ships. They at once made after
us, and with half a gale and a heavy sea they gained on us fast. As we had
taken out the dollars from the prizes and had them on board the _Pallas_,
the thought of losing them was even more vexatious than the idea of seeing
the inside of a French prison. The _Pallas_ was a very crank vessel, and
her lee main-deck guns were under water, and even the quarter-deck
carronades were at times immersed. However, the Frenchmen came up so fast
that it was necessary, at any cost, to crowd on more sail. Cochrane had
all the hawsers brought up, and with these got up preventer stays, and
then every sail was spread.

"This drove her bows-under through the seas. Still they came up to us, but
they were also plunging so heavily that they too were unable to fire a
gun. Presently we had one on each side of us, with less tha