The four remaining boats were not frightened off, but, rowing with might and main, reached the side of the vessel and began clambering on board.  They were enraged, and as their heads rose above the gunwales they shouted, “No quarter!”

“No quarter!” replied the Americans, discharging their pistols in their faces and pressing them back into the water with their pikes.  The assailants displayed great bravery and made desperate efforts to board the privateer; but the Americans needed not the incentive of the warning that no quarter would be given to fight with all the vigor and skill at their command.  The struggle was a furious one, but in the end the British were so decisively defeated that only two of the boats returned to the ships.  The others, filled with dead and wounded, drifted ashore.

[Illustration:  BRITISH ATTACK ON SULLIVAN ISLAND.]

(Our Last Naval Engagement with England.)

In this brief but terrific struggle there were only two Americans killed and seven wounded, while the enemy acknowledged a loss of thirty-four killed and eighty-six wounded, the former including the leader of the expedition.

Admiral Cochrane was so incensed by the rough treatment his men had received that he determined to throw neutrality to the winds and destroy the defiant privateer.  Nothing more was attempted that evening, but in the morning the Carnation advanced to the attack of the General Armstrong.  This gave the latter a chance to bring its Long Tom into play, and it was served with such unerring accuracy that not a shot missed.  Before the brig could come to close quarters she was so crippled that she was obliged to withdraw.

The three ships now closed in.  It would have been folly to fight them.  So Captain Reid scuttled his ship, lowered his boats and rowed ashore.  The enemy were disposed to follow him thither, but he and his men took refuge in an old stone fortress and dared the Englishmen to do so.  Upon second thought they decided to leave the Americans to themselves.

This wonderful exploit was celebrated in song, one stanza of which ended thus: 

“From set of sun till rise of morn, through the long September night, Ninety men against two thousand, and the ninety won the fight;

In the harbor of Fayal the Azore.”

While the victory of itself was one of the most remarkable of which there is any record, it resembled that of Perry on Lake Erie in its far-reaching consequences.  Admiral Cochrane found his ships so crippled that he returned to England to refit.  He then sailed for New Orleans, which he reached a few days after it had been occupied by General Jackson.  But for the delay caused by his fight with Captain Reid he would have shut out General Jackson from the city and prevented his winning the most glorious land victory of the whole war.

LESSER WARS.