The remaining four continued the fight, but the little privateer was too much for them. Around and around she veered, broadsiding with astonishing accuracy, and knocking the spars about like a foot-ball team kicking a ball. “Pow! Pow!” the guns roared, and the men cried, “Remember the oath of our captain! Let’s take ’em all!”
It began to look as if they would do it, too; for, now upon the starboard quarter appeared the white sails of a vessel, and, as she approached, a joyous cheer arose from the deck of the Boscawen, for it was the Sheerness.
“Now we’ll get ’em! Now we’ll get ’em!” yelled the British sailors, and they plied their guns with renewed activity and care.
Down came the flag upon one of the Frenchmen, and—in a few moments—down came another. Then, as the Sheerness rolled closer, two more ensigns fluttered to the deck. There was but one Frenchman left, and she made off, with the newcomer hot in pursuit.
“Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!” The sailors on board the Boscawen were fairly jumping for joy. “Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!” they yelled.
And well might they cheer, for had they not won one of the pluckiest sea-fights of all history? The enemy is said to have had one hundred and thirteen killed and drowned, while the casualties of the Boscawen amounted to but one killed and seven wounded. “And this,” says an old chronicler of the spirited affair, “was due to the fact that the British privateer had a bulwark of elm-planking, man-high, around her deck. It was so fashioned that there was a step on which the marines could mount and fire, and then come down in order to load. Furthermore, this elm-wood did not splinter; but kept out the bullets, and closed up around the holes made by shot.”
At any rate, it was a glorious victory, and when—a few hours later—the Sheerness came back with the other French vessel a prize, the total capture amounted to six vessels: homeward bound traders from Martinique, provided with letters of marque, and with about six guns each. Their crews were undoubtedly undisciplined and ill-used to shooting, else how could they have done so badly with the Boscawen?
The prizes were headed for the English coast and arrived at King’s Road, Bristol, in a few days, where a swarm of eager sight-seers crowded about the shattered craft.
“My! My!” said many. “This Walker is another Drake. He is a valiant soul!”
And so thought the British Admiralty, for they sent him a letter (upon his reporting to them) which read: