me upon the Brilliant
chasing some Spanish craft into Cartagena and, as we had Spanish
colours up, she took us for one of them, and blazed away at us."

"But why didn't you pull down the Spanish colours, at once, Bob? I
never heard of anything so silly," Carrie said, indignantly.

"Well, you see, Carrie, they were some distance off, and weren't
likely to damage us much; and we ran straight in, and anchored with
the rest under the guns of the battery, outside Cartagena. Seeing
us fired at, of course, they never suspected we were English. Then,
at night, we captured the two vessels lying next to us, and put out
to sea. The batteries blazed away at us, and it was not very
pleasant till we got outside their range. They did not do us very
much damage. Two gunboats came out after us, but the brig beat them
back, and we helped."

"Who were we?" Captain O'Halloran asked.

"We were the prizes, of course. I was in command of one."

"Hooray, Bob!" Gerald exclaimed, with a great laugh, while Carrie
uttered an exclamation of horror.

"Well, you see, the second mate had been sent off in the first
prize, and there was only Joe Lockett and me; so he took the
biggest of the two ships we cut out, and the captain put me in
command of the men that took the other. I had the boatswain with me
and, of course, he was the man who really commanded, in getting up
the sails and all that sort of thing. He was killed by a shot from
the battery, and was the only man hit on our vessel; but there were
five killed, on board the brig, in the fight with the gunboats.

"We fell in with the Brilliant, on the way back, and I went on
board; and you should have seen how Jim Sankey opened his eyes,
when I said that I was in command of the prize. They are awfully
good prizes, too, I can tell you. The one I got is laden with wine;
and the big one was a barque from Lima, with hides, and two hundred
tons of lead, and fifty boxes of silver--about thirty-three
thousand pounds' worth.

"Just think of that! The captain said she was worth, altogether, at
least forty thousand pounds. That is something like a prize, isn't
it?"

"Yes, that is.

"What do you think, Carrie? I propose that I sell my commission,
raise as much as I can on the old place in Ireland, and fit out a
privateer. Bob will, of course, be captain; you shall be first
mate; and I will be content with second mate's berth; and we will
sail the salt ocean, and pick up our forty-thousand-pound pr