And here I felt a conflict between duty and inclination.  The latter prompted me to make off at once after the landing party and do what might be done to save Lucy’s property.  But my orders were to deal with the buccaneers, and I felt that I should not be justified in interfering on behalf of a private person, however dear to me, until my first duty was fulfilled.

It was a question then whether I should first attack the ship or capture the boats on the strand.  To accomplish the latter we should have to overpower the men who had no doubt been left in charge, and there would certainly be some noise that would alarm the men on board the vessel, so that although the possession of the boats would cut off the return of those who had landed, it would also make the capture of the brig far more difficult.  On all grounds it seemed better to wait until the landing party had gone too far to return in time to help their comrades, and then cut out the ship.  When that was in our hands I should be free to go ashore and set off in pursuit of the ruffians who, I was convinced, were marching for Lucy’s house.

Ordering my men to put me alongside Punchard’s boat, I arranged with him the manner of our attack.  I would make for the larboard, he for the starboard side, and we would board as nearly as possible at the same moment.  This being settled I whispered the word to go, and the two boats crept along the shore in shadow as silently as we could until we came directly opposite the enemy’s vessel.  Then I, having the tiller of the leading boat, brought her round and steered her straight for the ship.  ’Twas scarce to be hoped, in spite of our muffled oars, that our approach should be wholly unheard; and we were no more than ten fathoms distant when the alarm was given.  There was not sufficient way on the boat, the tide being between flood and ebb, to bring us quite to the vessel, but after a few more strokes I ordered the men to ship oars and seize their arms, and we came under the brig’s counter just in time to escape a volley from the deck.

We swarmed up, half a ’dozen of us together, the men shouting and cursing as Jack tars will, and met with a very warm reception.  The enemy was assembled in full force to beat us back, the watch below having had time to tumble up, though to be sure they were half dazed with sleep, and maybe drink.  If they had been wide-awake I will not answer for it that we should not have been repulsed; even as it was, several of my crew were driven headlong back into the boat and the sea.  But the rest gained a footing on deck, and I warrant you they kept it.  We were at too close quarters to fire; ’twas a brief hand-to-hand encounter with cutlasses and clubbed muskets, and what with the clashing of the weapons and the cries of the men we made a great din and hurly burly.

But the enemy had lost their sole chance of success when they failed to dislodge us before Joe’s men arrived.  ’Twas but a minute before his boat came round the bows to the starboard side, and then the crew swarmed up, with Joe at their head, and fell upon the rear of our assailants.  Thus hemmed in between our two parties the buccaneers saw ’twas vain to contend longer.  They flung down their arms and cried (in many tongues) for quarter; and within five minutes of our first setting foot on deck we had them securely battened down below.