eating him
off," I observed.

"There are always chances in war, and one of them may be in our favour;
so it is our business to fight hard to the end. A happy shot may knock
away his masts and render him helpless, or enter his magazine and blow
him up; or we may send half a dozen of our pills between wind and water,
and compel him to keep all hands at the pumps, so that he will have no
time to look after us."

"But the same may happen to us," observed Harry.

"Granted; those belong to the chances of war," answered Tom. "I was
only speaking of those in our favour. We must not think of the others;
if the worst comes to the worst, we can but go to the bottom with our
colours flying, as many pretty men have had to do before."

On the whole, Tom's remarks did not greatly increase our spirits. Harry
and I walked aft together.

"One of us may fall, Dick," said Harry to me in a grave tone. "If I do,
you will carry my last fond love to my mother and sister and poor Lucy,
and say that my last thoughts were about them."

"That I will," I answered. "And should I fall and you escape, you will
see my parents, and tell your mother and sister Mary how to the last
moment of my life I thought of them--how grateful I am for all their
kindness to me."

The expressions we exchanged were but natural to young men who were
about to engage for the first time in their lives in a desperate
battle--for desperate we knew it must be, even should we come off
victorious, if the stranger astern was, as we supposed, a pirate. We
paced the deck together. The suspense we were doomed to undergo was
more trying than when we were engaged in making or shortening sail, and
the gale was blowing and the vessel tumbling about. Now we were gliding
calmly on, with nothing to do except occasionally to take a look astern
at our expected enemy. I began to long for daylight, and wished even to
see the stranger come up within shot, so that we might ascertain to a
certainty her true character. At length a ruddy glow appeared beyond
her in the east, gradually increasing in depth and brightness until the
whole sky was suffused with an orange tint, and the sun, like a vast
ball of fire, rose rapidly above the horizon, forming a glowing
background to the sails of our pursuer, who came gliding along over the
shining ocean towards us. Already she was almost within range of our
long gun, which the captain now ordered to be trained aft through one of
the ster