"To the tyrant knights of Malta!" bellowed Lancelloti through his trumpet: "to become their slaves! Bah! Never, while the great deep can hide us, and we can throw a match in the magazine!" After a good deal of skilful manoeuvring, the action commenced in stern earnest. The pirates fought like demons: for slavery or death was their fate if vanquished; but the Christians opposed them with coolness and bravery, The heavy metal of the latter battered to wreck and ruin the bulwarks of the former,—dismantling their guns, and heaping the deck with dead; whom they were soon compelled to throw overboard to clear the way. The enormous fifty pound balls of the corvette’s forecastle piece, created a devastation, to behold which made my heart leap with joy. The corsair was evidently getting the worst of the battle: her deck was torn up and ploughed in a thousand places, and the white splinters flew around in incessant showers; her sails were blown to rags, her standing and running rigging hung all in bights and loops, useless and disordered; while the blessed banner, the taper masts, and taut cordage of the Gierusalemme towered above the dense smoke in as perfect order as when the engagement began. During this yard-arm contest, my situation was horrible: I was ironed helplessly to the deck, amid all its fury, and was, consequently, unable to fight or fly, to save Laura or myself. Ah! how I trembled lest the missiles of the Maltese might penetrate the place of her confinement. Incessantly they were crashing around me, tearing up the strong planks, dashing boats and booms to fragments, and scattering brains and blood on every side. The slippery deck was flooded with the red current, which gushed from the lee scuppers. I was suffocating beneath the corpses which fell continually above me, and shrieked and struggled under the ghastly load; but the ring-bolts were immoveable, and my cries were unheeded amid that frightful din. On all sides rang the curses, threats and cheers of the living, the groans of the dying, the clanking of blocks and handspikes, the rattle of chains, and stamping of feet, mingled with the creaking and jarring of the guns as they were worked on deck, hauled back by their tackles, loaded and urged again to port; and then burst the deafening roar, while the small arms from forecastle, poop, and tops, made up a medley of horrors! Riddled below and wrecked aloft, the corsair lay like a log on the water, and the fire of her guns died away.