At last the explosion came.  The English sloop Zebra was sent down into the Gulf of Paria to clear it of French privateers, manned by the defeated maroons and brigands of the French islands, who were paying respect to no flag, but pirating indiscriminately.  Chacon confessed himself glad enough to have them exterminated.  He himself could not protect his own trade.  But the neutrality of the island must be respected.  Skinner, the Zebra’s captain, sailed away towards the Boca, and found, to his grim delight, that the privateers had mistaken him for a certain English merchantman whom they had blockaded in Port of Spain, and were giving him chase.  He let them come up and try to board; and what followed may be easily guessed.  In three-quarters of an hour they were all burnt, sunk, or driven on shore; the remnant of their crews escaped to Port of Spain, to join the French Republicans and vow vengeance.

Then, in a hapless hour, Captain Vaughan came into Port of Spain in the Alarm frigate.  His intention was, of course, to protect the British and Spanish.  They received him with open arms.  But the privateers’ men attacked a boat’s crew of the Alarm, were beaten, raised a riot, and attacked a Welsh lady’s house where English officers were at a party; after which, with pistol shots and climbing over back walls, the English, by help of a few Spanish gentlemen, escaped, leaving behind them their surgeon severely wounded.

Next morning, at sunrise, almost the whole of the frigate’s crew landed in Port of Spain, fully armed, with Captain Vaughan at their head; the hot Welsh blood boiling in him.  He unfurled the British flag, and marched into the town to take vengeance on the mob.  A Spanish officer, with two or three men, came forward.  What did a British captain mean by violating the law of nations?  Vaughan would chastise the rascally French who had attacked his men.  Then he must either kill the Spaniard or take him prisoner:  and the officer tendered his sword.

‘I will not accept the arms of a brave man who is doing his duty,’ quoth poor over-valiant Vaughan, and put him aside.  The hot Welsh blood was nevertheless the blood of a gentleman.  They struck up ‘Britons, Strike Home,’ and marched on.  The British and Spanish came out to entreat him.  If a fight began, they would be all massacred.  Still he marched on.  The French, with three or four thousand slaves, armed, and mounting the tricolour cockade, were awaiting them, seemingly on the Savannah north of the town.  Chacon was at his wits’ end.  He had but eighty soldiers, who said openly they would not fire on the English, but on the French.  But the English were but 240, and the French twelve times that number.  By deft cutting through cross streets Chacon got between the two bodies of madmen, and pleaded the indignity to Spain and the violation of neutral ground.  The English must fight him before they fought the French.  They would beat him:  but as soon as the first shot was fired, the French would attack them likewise, and both parties alike would be massacred in the streets.