shall not haul down votre drapeau; Vous avez se rendre, n’est pas?”

Captain Brisac raised his hand to his mouth as though to reply; waving it at the same time for the helmsman to sheer us alongside; the men with the grappling irons being crouched under the bulwarks all ready to heave; and all hands fore and aft straining forward like hounds in leash, waiting breathlessly for the coming shock.

“What ship is that?” hailed the skipper; not that he wanted particularly to know, just at that moment; he hoped to find out for himself very shortly; but the question served to fill up time until the moment for action should arrive.

“‘L’Audacieuse;’ frégate de —,” began the French captain; when an officer sprang into the rigging beside him, and said something in an excited manner, pointing at us and gesticulating with frightful vehemence.

In the meantime our helmsman, touching the wheel as daintily as though we had been sailing a match, brought us alongside so cleverly that the two ships touched with a shock which was barely perceptible, just enough in fact “to swear by,” as the gunner remarked.

“Heave!” shouted Sennitt to the men with the grappling irons, “Fire!” roared the skipper; and away went our double broadside crash into the Frenchman, eliciting such a chorus of shrieks and yells as might lead one to suppose that Pandemonium had broken loose. Three or four of the frigate’s guns replied: and there was an ominous crashing among our spars; but no one paused to ascertain the extent of the damage; and our men had sprung like tigers into the frigate’s rigging almost before our own guns had exploded; they were, therefore, so far safe. Captain Brisac made a dash at the frigate’s mizen rigging while giving the word to fire; with Markham and myself close upon his heels; but before he had fairly got a hold of the ratlines a sponge was thrust out of one of the upper-deck ports, catching him in the face, and inflicting such a blow that he fell back upon us unfortunate mids, and would have gone down between the two ships had we not caught him unceremoniously by the collar and steadied him on his feet again.

The sponge was the reverse of clean, and the blow had been delivered with such hearty good-will just between the eyes that our venerated commander’s claret was very effectually tapped; he presented therefore a somewhat alarming spectacle as he flung himself in upon the Frenchman’s deck; his face black from contact with the foul sponge, the dingy colour being pleasantly 

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