us in moments of suspense.  That was a fearful hour, when a shot had scarce to leap a cannon’s length to find its commission; when the belches of the English guns burned the hair of our faces; when Death was sovereign, merciful or cruel at his pleasure.  The red flashes disclosed many an act of coolness and of heroism.  I saw a French lad whip off his coat when a gunner called for a wad, and another, who had been a scavenger, snatch the rammer from Pearce’s hands when he staggered with a grape-shot through his chest.  Poor Jack Pearce!  He did not live to see the work ‘Scolding Sairy’ was to do that night.  I had but dragged him beyond reach of the recoil when he was gone.

Then a cry came floating down from aloft.  Thrice did I hear it, like one waking out of a sleep, ere I grasped its import.  “The Alliance!  The Alliance!” But hardly had the name resounded with joy throughout the ship, when a hail of grape and canister tore through our sails from aft forward.  “She rakes us!  She rakes us!” And the French soldiers tumbled headlong down from the poop with a wail of “Les Anglais font prise!” “Her Englishmen have taken her, and turned her guns against us!” Our captain was left standing alone beside the staff where the stars and stripes waved black in the moonlight.

“The Alliance is hauling off, sir!” called the midshipman of the mizzen-top.  “She is making for the Pallas and the Countess of Scarborough.”

“Very good, sir,” was all the commodore said.

To us hearkening for his answer his voice betrayed no sign of dismay.  Seven times, I say, was that battle lost, and seven times regained again.  What was it kept the crews at their quarters and the officers at their posts through that hell of flame and shot, when a madman could scarce have hoped for victory?  What but the knowledge that somewhere in the swirl above us was still that unswerving and indomitable man who swept all obstacles from before him, and into whose mind the thought of defeat could not enter.  His spirit held us to our task, for flesh and blood might not have endured alone.

We had now but one of our starboard nine-pounders on its carriage, and word came from below that our battery of twelves was all but knocked to scrap iron, and their ports blown into one yawning gap.  Indeed, we did not have to be told that sides and stanchions had been carried away, for the deck trembled and teetered under us as we dragged ‘Scolding Sairy’ from her stand in the larboard waist, clearing a lane for her between the bodies.  Our feet slipped and slipped as we hove, and burning bits of sails and splinters dropping from aloft fell unheeded on our heads and shoulders.  With the energy of desperation I was bending to the pull, when the Malay in front of me sank dead across the tackle.  But, ere I could touch him, he was tenderly lifted aside, and a familiar figure seized the rope where the dead man’s hands had warmed it.  Truly, the commodore was everywhere that night.