While his command was being fulfilled, he quitted the quarter-deck, and ascended to the forecastle. Then, looking right ahead, he distinguished the galleon, scarcely a gun-shot in his front, and on the point of veering to windward. From the purposed change in her course, he was satisfied that, like him, she had suddenly become aware of the proximity of an enemy, and was seeking to avoid him. All prospect of surprise, therefore, was at an end, and he returned to the quarter-deck with the determination of steering straight alongside of her. On the quarter-deck, by the side of the capstan, he found Halyard and the drummer. “Beat to quarters!” he said, to the latter. The drummer obeyed; and while his spirit-stirring summons rolled through the ship, Hildebrand laid his hand on Halyard’s arm, and drew him aside. “Man the three boats,” he said. “I will run straight for the galleon, and, as we come alongside, drop you all astern. When I think ye are fairly on your way, I will give the enemy a broadside, and, in the confusion, do you board her, all with one mind, on her nearer quarter. I will thereafter lend thee what succour I can.” “A right noble project!” observed Halyard, feeling his pockets with both his hands. “How many men shall I muster, Sir?” “Forty!” answered Hildebrand, “which, as thou knowest, is half the crew. Now,” he added, in a deeper tone, as he grasped Halyard by the hand, “give thee farewell!” Halyard did not reply on the instant. His pause, however--only that the crisis rendered the briefest pause perceptible--was hardly apparent, albeit, when he did speak, his voice was somewhat shaken. “Farewell, noble captain!” he said. “Life is but short; let us live well on the road, says the gentle Shepherd of Salisbury Plain.” During the short interval that the commander and his lieutenant thus conversed, the drummer had beaten his summons, which was to lead so many to a bloody end, with unabated assiduity. Short as the interval was--and it embraced but a few minutes--it sufficed to assemble on the deck the whole of the crew, and to cover every arrangement for entering into action. Each man’s bed, tied up taught in his hammock like a sack, was placed in the hammock-nettings, along the top of the ship’s bulwarks; the decks were cleared of all lumber; the guns were all manned; and the powder, with the portfires, sponges, and other implements for charging them, handed up the hatchways. Every man was armed; the flag of Old England was hoisted in the mizen; and nothing remained, for the furtherance and completion of the design they had in hand, but to come up with the enemy.