The Frenchman cast off at once and came to meet us, the Red Hand flying at his masthead, the red lump at his bows, the red streak clearly visible just below the open gun-ports.

“Do your duty, lads,” said John Ozanne.  “There’ll be tough work for us.  He carries heavy metal.  We’ll close with him at all odds, and then the British bull-dog must see to it.”

We gave him another cheer, and then a cloud of white smoke burst from the Frenchman’s fore deck, and our topmast and all its hamper came down with a crash, and our deck rumbled with bitter curses.

“——­ him!” said Martin Cohu.  “That’s not fair play.  Dismantling shot or I’m a Dutchman!  It’s only devils and Yankees use shot like that. ——­ me, if we don’t hang him if we catch him.”

John Ozanne tried him with our long gun forward, but the shot fell short.  In point of metal the Frenchman beat us, and our best hope was to close with him as quickly as possible.

But he knew that quite as well as we.  He was well up to his business, and chose his own distance.  His next shot swept along our deck, smashing half a dozen men most horribly, and tied itself round the foot of the mainmast, wounding it badly.  And then I saw for the first time that most hideous missile which the Americans had introduced, but which other nations declined to use, as barbarous and uncivilised.  It was a great iron ring round which were looped iron bars between two and three feet long.  The bars played freely like keys on a ring, and splayed out in their flight, and did the most dreadful execution.  Intended originally, I believe, for use only against hostile spars and rigging, this rascally freebooter put them to any and every service, and with his powerful armament and merciless ferocity they went far towards explaining his success.

For myself, and I saw the same in all my shipmates, the first sense of dismayed impotence in the face of those most damnable whirling flails very soon gave place to black fury.  For the moment one thing only did I desire, and that was to be within arm’s reach of the Frenchman, cutlass in hand.  Had he been three times our number I doubt if one of them would have escaped if we had reached him.  My heart felt like to burst with its boiling rage, and all one could do was to wait patiently at one’s post, and it was the hardest thing I had ever had to do yet.

John Ozanne made us all lie down, save when a change of course was necessary, while he did his utmost to get the weather gauge of the enemy.  And he managed it at last by a series of tacks which cost us many men and more spars.  Then, throwing prudence to the winds, he drove straight for the Frenchman to board him at any cost.  It was our only chance, for his heavier guns would have let him plug us from a distance, till every man on board was down.

We gave a wild cheer as we recognised the success of John Ozanne’s manoeuvring, and every man gripped his steel and ground his teeth for a fight to the death.