“It’s about Uncle Harry.  Dad showed me a letter from him to-day, and he’s fought a splendid action down off Grand Bahama.  Oh, you must hear!  It seems he’d been beating about in his frigate for close on three months—­on and off the islands on the look-out for those Spanish fellows that snap up our fruit-ships.  Well, the water on board was beginning to smell; so he ran in through the nor’-west entrance of Providence Channel, anchored just inside, and sent his casks ashore to be refilled.  They’d taken in the fresh stock, and the Venus was weighing for sea again almost before the last boatload came alongside.—­Can’t you see her, the beauty!  One anchor lifted, t’other chain shortened in, tops’ls and t’gallants’ls cast off, ready to cant her at the right moment—­”

“Is that how they do it?”

“Of course it is.  Well just then Uncle Harry spied a boat beating in through the entrance.  He had passed her outside two days before—­one of those small open craft that dodge about groping for sponges—­splendid naked fellows, the crews are.  She had put about and run back in search of him, and her news was of a Spanish guarda-costa making down towards Havana with three prizes.  Think of it!  Uncle Harry was off and after them like a greyhound, and at sunrise next morning he sighted them in a bunch.  He had the wind of them and the legs of them; there isn’t a speedier frigate afloat than the Venus—­although, he says, she was getting foul with weed:  and after being chased for a couple of hours the Spaniard and two of the prizes hauled up and showed fight.  Now for it! . . .  He ran past the guarda-costa, drawing her fire, but no great harm done; shot up under the sterns of the two prizes, that were lying not two hundred yards apart; and raked ’em with half-a-broadside apiece—­no time, you see, to reload between.  It pretty well cleaned every Spaniard off their decks—­Why are you putting your hands to your ears!”

“Go on,” said Ruth withdrawing them.

“By this, of course, he had lost way and given the guarda-costa the wind of him.  But she couldn’t reach the Venus for twenty minutes and more, because of the prizes lying helpless right in her way, and in half that time Uncle Harry had filled sail again and was manoeuvring out of danger.  Bit by bit he worked around her for the wind’ard berth, got it, bore down again and hammered her for close upon three hours.  She fought, he says, like a rat in a sink, and when at last she pulled down her colours the two prizes had patched up somehow and were well off for Havana after the third, that had showed no fight from the beginning.  Quick as lightning he gets his prisoners on board, heads off on the new chase, and by sundown has taken the prizes all three—­the third one a timber-ship, full of mahogany . . .  That wasn’t the end of his luck, either; for the captain of the guarda-costa turned out to be a blackguard that two years ago took a British captain prisoner and cut off his ears, which accounts for his fighting so hard.  ’Didn’t want to meet me if he could help it,’ writes Uncle Harry, and says the man wouldn’t haul down the flag till his crew had tied him up with ropes.”