-True
Blue's gone; he's on board the Frenchman, and they'll make mincemeat of
him--that they will!"

He observed, also, Abel Bush, Tom Marline, and others standing eyeing
the French frigate, the very pictures of anxiety and disappointed rage.
He saw too clearly that True Blue must have been one of those who had
been carried off in the French ship when she broke adrift from them. To
assist in clearing her, the _Ruby's_ helm had been put aport, or to
larboard, as was then the expression, and this carried her still farther
away from _La Belle Citoyenne_.

Captain Garland was not aware for some little time that any of his
people had gained the enemy's decks. The instant the fact was
communicated to him, he became doubly eager to get once more alongside.
The minutes, however, appeared like hours to those who knew that their
shipmates and friends were surrounded by exasperated foes, who were too
likely, in the heat of the moment, to give no quarter. Paul Pringle
groaned with anxiety for the fate of his godson. There he stood, his
huge beard blackened with smoke and dabbled with a shipmate's blood; his
hair, which had escaped from under his handkerchief when he went aloft,
streaming in the breeze; his brawny arm bared, and his drawn cutlass in
his hand; and looking truly like one of the sea-kings of old, the rovers
of the main, prepared for a desperate struggle with his enemies. Just
then the sails of the French frigate were taken aback, and the effect of
this was to cause her to make a stern board, which drove her right down
on the _Ruby_.

Once more, by slightly shifting his helm, Captain Garland allowed her to
drop alongside, the respective bows and sterns of the two ships being in
opposite directions.

"And now, my lads, lash her fast!" he shouted. "We must not let her
part from us till she is ours."

The very instant the sides of the two frigates ground together, Paul
Pringle, who, with a party of boarders, many of them old shipmates,
stood ready on the maindeck, sprang through the after-ports, shouting
out, "Remember little True Blue, boys! Let us get back our Billy True
Blue!"

The clash of steel and the occasional report of pistols saluted their
ears, and there stood at bay the gallant little band, the lieutenant and
Peter Ogle, with most of the men, bleeding at every pore--one or two,
indeed, stretched lifeless at their feet; but True Blue himself was
nowhere to be seen. Numbers were pressing round the