Levelling my pistol at the advancing speaker, and waving our men on with my sword, I gave him no answer, but fired. The pistol flashed in the pan. In an instant the leader of the foe was upon me, having sprung over the bulwarks as I spoke. He was a tall, athletic man, and lifting his sword high above his head, while in his other hand he presented a pistol toward my breast, he dashed upon me. I parried his thrust with my blade, but as he fired I felt a sharp pain in my arm, like the puncture of a pin. I knew that I was wounded, but it only inspired me with fiercer energy. I made a lunge at him, but he met it with a blow of his sword, which shivered my weapon to atoms. Springing upon my gigantic adversary, I wreathed my arms around him, and endeavored to make up for the want of a weapon, by bearing him to the deck in my arms; but my utmost exertions, desperate as they were, scarcely sufficed to stagger him, and shortening his blade, he was about plunging it into my heart, when a pistol went off close beside me, and my antagonist, giving a convulsive leap, fell dead upon the deck. I freed myself from his embrace and sprang to my feet, just in time to see little Dick, with the smoke still wreathing from the mouth of his pistol, borne away by the press of the assault. In the next instant I lost sight of him in the melee, which now became really terrific. Hastily snatching a brand from one of the fallen men, I plunged once more into the fight, for the enemy having been by this time reinforced by another boat, were now pouring in upon us in such numbers that the arm of every man became absolutely necessary. It was indeed a desperate contest. Hand to hand and foot to foot we fought; desperation on the one hand, and a determination to conquer on the other, lent double fury to our crew; while the clash of swords, the explosion of fire-arms, the shouts of the combatants, and the groans and shrieks of the wounded and dying, gave additional horror to the scene. By this time our captain had reached the deck, and his powerful voice was heard over all the din of the battle urging on his men. The fall of the enemy’s leader began now to be generally known among his crew, and the consequence was soon apparent in their wavering and want of unity. In vain the inferior officers urged them on; in vain they found their retreat cut off by the shot we had hove into their boats; in vain they were reminded by their leaders that they must now conquer or die, they no longer fought with the fierceness of their first onset, and though they still combatted manfully, and some of them desperately, they had lost all unity of purpose, and, struck with a sudden panic, at a last overwhelming charge of our gallant followers, they fled in disorder, some leaping wildly overboard, some crying for quarter when they could retreat no farther, and all of them giving up the contest as lost. Not a soul escaped. They who did not fall in the strife were either drowned in