So the delighted Trouins put him in charge of a splendid privateersman mounting forty-eight guns, sailing under the simple name of Francois, and, as she forged valiantly into the English channel, her skipper chanted an old French song, which ran,—
“Sons of St. Malo, hark to my lay,
With a Heave! Ho! Blow the man down.
For we’ll capture a lugger ere close of the day,
With a Heave! Ho! Blow the man down.
“She’s filled with gold nuggets, her crew is asleep,
Then board her, and take her, for dead men are cheap,
We’ll spike them and pike them, like so many sheep.
With a Heave! Ho! Blow the man down.”
It was not long before a sail was sighted, and, on the 12th day of January, 1695, the stout, little Francois overhauled a solitary timber ship, loaded with huge trees, bound to England from the good town of Boston in New England. She was an easy capture, and, Du Guay-Trouin smiled with joy when her skipper said:
“Three other lumber ships are in the offing. But they are under convoy of the frigate Nonsuch with forty-eight guns, and the Falcon with thirty-eight cannon. Look out my bold sea-dog, there’ll be trouble.”
But the French mariner laughed.
“It’s just what I’m searching for,” said he, and forthwith he swung the stout Francois in wide circles, with look-outs at every mast-head.
“Sail ho!” shouted the watch, next morn, and there, off the port bow, were the three merchantmen strung out in a line, with the two protecting gun-boats to windward.
Like a greyhound the Francois swept down upon them, and with the audacity of despair, the privateersman of St. Malo ranged alongside of the Falcon and opened fire. The engagement was short. In an hour’s time the guns of the Englishman were silent and a white pennon fluttered from the mizzen-mast.
The Nonsuch, meanwhile, had been ranging to windward in a vain endeavor to bring her guns to bear upon the Frenchman without crippling her own mate, and—as the Francois drifted away from the lurching Falcon—she bore down to within twenty yards, luffed, and spanked a rakish broadside into the privateer.