As the crash came, and the two ships were interlocked, the Gannets, headed by their gallant captain, poured over the hammock nettings and gained their enemy's deck. Every inch was grimly contested, several of the Gannets falling between the two vessels and meeting a miserable fate by being ground between the heaving sides.
Captain Poynings singled out the scarred-faced lieutenant, and, being well ahead of his men, his position was for a time one of considerable danger. I watched the fight without fear of being made a mark by the pirates, who were too hard pressed to heed me. The sight held me spellbound, till I observed one of the pirates covering our captain with a musket. The man waited, with finger on trigger, till the position of the combatants would give him an opportunity to fire without injuring his leader.
Seeing this, I grasped a loaded musket, and at fifteen yards' distance put a ball through the villain's head. Almost at the same time Captain Poynings ran his opponent through the arm, and the latter, jumping backwards, turned and ran towards the hatchway.
Then came a cry, from which side I knew not: "The magazine! the magazine!" and immediately the captain shouted: "Back, men, for your lives!"
There was a rush for the shelter of the Gannet, and, realizing the danger, I crept along the foot-rope of the foreyard, gained the foreyard of the Gannet, and thence made for her foretop. Once there I lost no time in descending to the deck, heartily thankful at treading the planks of a British man-o'-war once more, though my return in the confusion was unnoticed.
The fighting was practically at an end, the Gannet being busily engaged in trying to free herself from the pirate's embrace, and keeping back the frenzied rushes of the doomed crew.
When the last grappling was severed, the Gannet swung slowly round, her flying jibboom still entangled in the pirate's bowsprit shrouds. Suddenly there was a blinding flash, followed by an appalling roar--the desperate villain had fired the magazine.
Luckily the Friend of the Sea had by this time used nearly all her ammunition, so that the explosion, though disastrous to herself, did us very little damage.
Before the debris flung high in the air by the explosion had fallen, the pirate ship had sunk beneath the waves, taking our flying jibboom and part of the jibboom with her, while a heavy pall of smoke covered the place where a moment before she was lying like a wounded animal at bay.
Now that all danger was past, the effects of the hardships I had undergone began to tell. I was faint, weary, and hungry; my clothes were in rags, my hands blistered, and my face blackened with powder. However, I made my way aft to report myself.