I peered over the rail. The two vessels lay grinding together, and as the tall fabric of the Death Ship leaned to the schooner, you thought she would crush and beat her down, but with the regularity of a pulse the[50] dark folds of water swept the little vessel clear, sometimes raising her when our ship lay aslant to the level of our upper deck, and giving me, therefore, a mighty good prospect of what was happening in her. Both vessels were off the wind and were surging through it with a prodigious hissing betwixt their sides.

The fright of the boarders had proved contagious. I shall never forget the sight! Small as the schooner was, there could not have been less than ninety men on her decks, and they made a very hell of the atmosphere about them with the raving notes in their cries and bawlings. My knowledge of French was small, but some of their screams I could follow, as for instance: "'Tis the Flying Dutchman!"

"Cut us adrift! Cut us adrift!"

"Flatten in those head-sheets! Shove her off! Shove her off! Pole her, my children, with a couple of sweeps!"

[51]

"Now s