that the added weight on the scarce-supported deck would land us all in the bilges.  Words fail me when I come to describe the frightful panic of these creatures, frenzied by the instinct of self-preservation.  They surged hither and thither as angry seas driven into a pocket of a storm-swept coast.  They trampled rough-shod over the moaning heaps of wounded and dying, and crowded the crews at the guns, who were powerless before their numbers.  Some fought like maniacs, and others flung themselves into the sea.

Those of us who had clung to hope lost it then.  Standing with my back to the mast, beating them off with a pike, visions of an English prison-ship, of an English gallows, came before me.  I counted the seconds until the enemy’s seamen would be pouring through our ragged ports.  The seventh and last time, and we were beaten, for we had not men enough left on our two decks to force them down again.  Yes,—­I shame to confess it—­the heart went clean out of me, and with that the pain pulsed and leaped in my head like a devil unbound.  At a turn of the hand I should have sunk to the boards, had not a voice risen strong and clear above that turmoil, compelling every man to halt trembling in his steps.

“Cast off, cast off!  ‘The Serapis’ is sinking.  To the pumps, ye fools, if you would save your lives!”

That unerring genius of the gardener’s son had struck the only chord!

They were like sheep before us as we beat them back into the reeking hatches, and soon the pumps were heard bumping with a renewed and a desperate vigour.  Then, all at once, the towering mainmast of the enemy cracked and tottered and swung this way and that on its loosened shrouds.  The first intense silence of the battle followed, in the midst of which came a cry from our top: 

“Their captain is hauling down, sir!”

The sound which broke from our men could scarce be called a cheer.  That which they felt as they sank exhausted on the blood of their comrades may not have been elation.  My own feeling was of unmixed wonder as I gazed at a calm profile above me, sharp-cut against the moon.

I was moved as out of a revery by the sight of Dale swinging across to the Serapis by the main brace pennant.  Calling on some of my boarders, I scaled our bulwarks and leaped fairly into the middle of the gangway of the Serapis.

Such is nearly all of my remembrance of that momentous occasion.  I had caught the one glimpse of our first lieutenant in converse with their captain and another officer, when a naked seaman came charging at me.  He had raised a pike above his shoulder ere I knew what he was about, and my senses left me.

CHAPTER LIII

IN WHICH I MAKE SOME DISCOVERIES

The room had a prodigious sense of change about it.  That came over me with something of a shock, since the moment before I had it settled that I was in Marlboro’ Street.  The bare branches swaying in the wind outside should belong to the trees in Freshwater Lane.  But beyond the branches were houses, the like of which I had no remembrance of in Annapolis.  And then my grandfather should be sitting in that window.  Surely, he was there!  He moved!  He was coming toward me to say:  “Richard, you are forgiven,” and to brush his eyes with his ruffles.