rtin Cohu. "That's not fair play. Dismantling shot or
I'm a Dutchman! It's only devils and Yankees use shot like that. ---- me,
if we don't hang him if we catch him."

John Ozanne tried him with our long gun forward, but the shot fell short.
In point of metal the Frenchman beat us, and our best hope was to close
with him as quickly as possible.

But he knew that quite as well as we. He was well up to his business, and
chose his own distance. His next shot swept along our deck, smashing half a
dozen men most horribly, and tied itself round the foot of the mainmast,
wounding it badly. And then I saw for the first time that most hideous
missile which the Americans had introduced, but which other nations
declined to use, as barbarous and uncivilised. It was a great iron ring
round which were looped iron bars between two and three feet long. The bars
played freely like keys on a ring, and splayed out in their flight, and did
the most dreadful execution. Intended originally, I believe, for use only
against hostile spars and rigging, this rascally freebooter put them to any
and every service, and with his powerful armament and merciless ferocity
they went far towards explaining his success.

For myself, and I saw the same in all my shipmates, the first sense of
dismayed impotence in the face of those most damnable whirling flails very
soon gave place to black fury. For the moment one thing only did I desire,
and that was to be within arm's reach of the Frenchman, cutlass in hand.
Had he been three times our number I doubt if one of them would have
escaped if we had reached him. My heart felt like to burst with its boiling
rage, and all one could do was to wait patiently at one's post, and it was
the hardest thing I had ever had to do yet.

John Ozanne made us all lie down, save when a change of course was
necessary, while he did his utmost to get the weather gauge of the enemy.
And he managed it at last by a series of tacks which cost us many men and
more spars. Then, throwing prudence to the winds, he drove straight for the
Frenchman to board him at any cost. It was our only chance, for his heavier
guns would have let him plug us from a distance, till every man on board
was down.

We gave a wild cheer as we recognised the success of John Ozanne's
manoeuvring, and every man gripped his steel and ground his teeth for a
fight to the death.

But it was not to be. Death was there, but no fight. For, as we plunged
straight fo