To the initiated, Captain Godfrey's handling of his craft on the approach of the three Spanish vessels will commend itself. It was an exceedingly pretty bit of seamanship, only possible at such a moment to a captain of consummate coolness, with his crew well in hand.
The Spaniards appear on this, as on so many other occasions, to have made the wildest practice with their firearms; Godfrey had not a man touched, after an action of one hour and a half, with a hand-to-hand fight at the end of it!
[17] An illegal and piratical act; she was bound to show her own colours before firing.
[18] Wale, or wales, sometimes termed "bends"; the thickest outside planking of the ship, at and above the water-line.
[19] There does not appear to be an island under this name on the west coast of South America, in any modern atlas. It must have been close to Callao, the sea-port of Lima, as he sent his prisoners on shore there next day.
[20] That is, to the north-westward of the northernmost of the Windward Islands, in the West Indies.
CHAPTER XXIII
In the year 1804 there was a very formidable French privateer cruising in the West Indies, by name the Bonaparte, carrying 18 guns and a crew of over 200. This vessel encountered, in the month of August, the British ship of war Hippomenes—a capture from the Dutch at the surrender of Demerara in the previous year—of 18 guns, commanded by Captain Kenneth McKenzie, who had in some measure disguised his ship in order to entrap privateers. The Frenchman was so far deceived as to invite a conflict, believing the Hippomenes to be a "Guineaman," or African slave-trader, which were almost always armed, but which the Bonaparte would have no cause to fear.