From the _History of Polperro_ we take the second account of the doings of its privateering fisherfolk. The story tells how when the _Unity_, a hired armed lugger, was cruising in the Channel off Ushant, with one Richard Rowett of Polperro in command, he discovered at dawn one morning the presence of two French frigates, “one on either side, who hoisted English colours, but from their build and rig he (Richard Rowett) had his suspicions as to their nationality. All doubts, however, were dispelled when a shot was fired across his bows to bring him to, and both immediately displayed the French flag. The nearest hailed him, and, considering the _Unity_ to be their prize, ordered him to lie to while they boarded her. This order Captain Rowett feigned to obey, and for the moment shortened sail; but when under the lee of the enemy, who were both lying to, quite contentedly lowering their boats with the sails aback, he suddenly spread all sail, passing ahead of both frigates, took the helm himself, ordered the crew to lie flat on the deck to escape the perfect shower of balls rained from the bow chasers and muskets of the enemy, which, in their anger and disappointment at so unexpectedly losing their prey, were fired on them.” Such smart seamanship and daring well deserved the success with which it met, and it is satisfactory to find that the “_Unity_ soon escaped out of range without anyone being hurt, and with only very slight damage being done to the sails and rigging.” Very little trace of the stirring times of old is discoverable in the peaceful life and law-abiding inhabitants of Polperro of these prosaic twentieth-century days. It is just a charming little haven with the quaintness which seems inseparable from all Cornish fishing villages, redolent of many memories of gallant and daring deeds accomplished by the ancestors of the contemplative fisherfolk who lounge in the sunshine on the quay--still smoking, maybe, tobacco on which duty has never been paid--when they are not engaged upon fishing expeditions or in saving their boats and belongings during the gales which turn the little haven into a roaring cavern of the winds. Fowey, but seven miles further west, is a much more sophisticated though perhaps not less charming place. For one thing, it has the railway, and another it has, somehow or other, preserved a measure of the importance and prosperity which belonged to it in the days when it, too, owed much to contraband trade, privateering, and hazardous enterprises. As one enters the Fowey River between the headlands, one truly (in the quaint words of old Carew) “lighteth on a fair and commodious haven, where the tide daily presenteth his double service of flowing and ebbing, to carry and recarry whatsoever the inhabitants shall be pleased to charge him withal, and his creeks, like a young wanton lover, fold about the land with many embracing arms.”