The manoeuvre was quickly performed. With a crash the brig’s stern ran against the schooner’s side, and before the enemy knew what the English seamen were about, they, led by their gallant young Captain, who was closely followed by True Blue, had leaped on her deck and were driving all before them.
A tall French officer, evidently a first-rate swordsman, stood his ground, and rallied a party round him. He encountered Sir Henry, who, attacked by another Frenchman, was on the point of being cut down, when True Blue with his trusty cutlass came to his aid, and turned the fury of the Frenchman against himself.
There was science against strength and pluck. True Blue saw that all ordinary rules of defence and attack must be let aside; so, throwing up the Frenchman’s sword with a back stroke of his cutlass, he sprang in on him, seized him by the throat, and, as he pushed him back, with another cut brought him to the deck.
The loss of their champion still more disheartened the French, who now gave way fore and aft. Numbers had been cut down—some jumped overboard, but the greater portion ran below and sang out lustily for quarter.
Strange to say, not a man of the Rover was hurt, while nearly fifty Frenchmen and Spaniards were killed and wounded.
The moment the schooner’s flag was hauled down, the Spanish boats made off; nor did they stop till they had disappeared within some harbour on the coast.
“I suppose,” said Gipples, looking at the swarthy Spanish soldiers with no friendly eye, “though these chaps may have liked to eat us if they had caught us, we ain’t obliged to eat them.”
“That will be as the Captain likes,” answered Tim Fid. “Perhaps he’ll not think them wholesome at this time of the year, and let them go.”
A very few days were sufficient to refit the Rover, and to store and provision her ready for sea. This time, however, she was ordered to cruise along the coasts of San Domingo and Porto Rico, towards the Leeward Islands.
At length she ran farther south, and came off the harbour of Point-à-Pitre, in the Island of Guadaloupe.