And now having accomplished, by fortune’s favor, my first duty, I resolved to make all speed after the fellows who had landed, hoping fervently that the noise of our engagement had not reached their ears and put them on their guard.  There was hot work before us, I well knew, if they numbered forty, as I had reason to believe.  I could not leave the brig wholly unguarded; yet I was loath to diminish my own little company; in the end I decided to leave a boatswain’s mate in command of a party of five (three who had had a ducking and two who had received slight hurts in the fight) and to take Joe and the other eighteen hot-foot to Penolver.

I had left instructions with Fincham on our brig to sail into the inlet in the morning to support us, and I told the boatswain’s mate to communicate with her as soon as she appeared.  Thus I had no anxiety about the security of the prize and the prisoners during my absence.

These arrangements made, we set off for the shore, taking two of the six men to row back to the brig the boats from which the buccaneers had landed, which we found hauled up on the beach, but no one in charge of them.  Either they had been left unattended because the leader had no fears for their safety, or the men set to watch had taken alarm from our doings on the brig and had decamped.  I hoped they had not gone ahead of us to warn their fellows, which indeed did not seem very likely, for they would be loath to venture alone into a strange country.  If the buccaneers had had warning of what was happening behind them and hastened back, or if we should miss them and they returned to the cove before us, they would at any rate be unable to recapture their vessel, lacking their boats.

I reckoned that ’twas near two hours since the main body of the buccaneers had departed; by this time they must be three parts of the way to the house, if that was their goal; so we set off at a great pace to follow them up.  The sun was not yet risen, though the darkness was lifting; and the air being cool, we could march without discomfort.

We had not gone very far, and had come to where the track runs between thin clumps of trees, when Joe Punchard suddenly left my side and darted into the woodland.  His bandiness was no check upon his running.  In a few seconds he was back, shoving before him a seaman much larger than himself, having one hand upon his neck and the other grasping his arm behind his back.  He thus propelled the man towards us at a quick trot, crying out to me: 

“Here be one of the villains, sir, and I reckon ’twill be well to make him speak.”

Without slackening our pace I made the captive walk by my side and questioned him.  He had been left, as I suspected, in charge of the boats, alone, and at the noise of our assault he had run up the path, intending to overtake his comrades and give them warning of what was happening.  But being out of his element, his heart failed him when he came into the wild wooded country, and he had been skulking behind the trees when Joe espied him.  He was a Frenchman.