s, with blocks and ropes, were seen
coming down by the run on deck.

"Now, my lads, let's up stick and away," cried Hawk. "They thought,
doubtless, that they were sure of us; but we'll show them that the
_Foam_ is not to be caught so easily."

All hands who could be spared from the guns, and I among the rest, flew
to their stations to trim sails; the yards were braced sharp up, and
with her head to the south-west, the _Foam_ stood away on a bowline from
her powerful antagonist. We were not to escape, however, with impunity;
for as soon as the brig's crew had somewhat recovered from the confusion
into which the damage done by our shot had thrown them, such guns as
could be brought to bear were fired at us with no bad aim. One struck
our taffrail, and another killed a man on the forecastle; but our
rigging escaped. Twice the brig missed stays in attempting to come
about, from so much of her head-sail having been cut away; and this, as
she all the time was sailing one way and we the other, contributed much
to increase our distance. The breeze also favoured us further by
freshening, making it more difficult to the enemy to repair damages,
while, as we were unhurt, it sent us along all the more rapidly. The
Americans are not the people to take the treatment we had given them
with calmness, especially as we were so much the smaller, and had less
force. At last, at a third trial, the brig came about, while she
continued without cessation firing at us. Not much damage was done,
though our sails had daylight made through them several times by her
shot, and another man was killed; but this casualty the pirates seemed
to make light of--it was the fortune of war, and might happen every
instant to any of us. The bodies, with scant examination, except to
discover whether there was money in their pockets, or rings in their
ears or on their fingers, were thrown overboard without a prayer or a
sigh. As the shot came whistling over us, they laughed when they saw me
bobbing down my head in the hope of avoiding them. I had no fancy, I
own, to be shot by people with whom I had not the slightest enmity, nor
whom I in any way wished to injure.

We soon found that the brig-of-war, instead of being a slow sailer, was
remarkably fast, and that, while we were in chase of her, she must, by
towing a sail overboard, or by some other manoeuvre, have deadened her
way, on purpose to allow us to come up with her. We had now, therefore,
to