With a loud cheer the English sailors, dropping their muskets, seized cutlass and pistol and dashed through the smoke, each man eager to be first on the enemy’s deck. They needed no encouragement; most of them had a score to pay off for their defeat at the same spot in the previous autumn. While the Frenchmen were still half stunned by the scorching fire and the loss of so many of their comrades, Jack’s men gained a footing on the deck. But now the French skipper’s voice could be heard rallying his crew, and the boarders were met by a serried mass armed with pistols and boarding pikes. And among the Frenchmen there was now a sprinkling of Englishmen, for the smugglers on shore had rushed over the gangway to their comrades thus hotly beset. Now a furious hand-to-hand fight raged about the lugger’s stern. Great was the clamor as steel clashed on steel, pistols barked, hoarse voices roared encouragement or defiance, wounded men groaned. Again and again Jack and his men were flung back by sheer weight of numbers against the lugger’s bulwarks; again and again they rallied and forced the enemy across the deck. No room here for fine weapon-play; men cut and thrust at random, met, grappled, flung away cutlass and pike to set to with nature’s own weapons. Many a Frenchman fell under the sledge-hammer blows of British sailors’ fists. Jack had no clear recollection afterward of the details of the fight. At one moment he found himself leading a rush of his own men, pressing the enemy back foot by foot until only a last desperate effort seemed wanting to drive them overboard. Then would come a check; a hoarse shout from the skipper, whom Jack by and by distinguished in the mêlée—a huge fellow of reckless courage; the tide turned, the smugglers rallied gamely, and Jack and his men, stubbornly as they fought, were borne back and back, losing inch by inch the ground they had so hardly gained. It was at one of these desperate moments that Jack heard at last the sound for which, throughout the struggle, he had been anxiously waiting. From the forefront of the lugger came a sudden rousing British cheer. There was a rush of feet in the rear of the smugglers, and in a second, as it seemed to Jack, the deck in front of him was clear. Ben Babbage had arrived. Carrying out orders given him previously, he had brought the long-boat unseen to the starboard side of the lugger, and, before the Frenchmen were aware of his presence, he was on deck, with Turley, Mudge, Folkard, and half a dozen other trusty shipmates. Beset now in both front and rear, the Frenchmen lost heart. Suddenly they made a rush for the gangway connecting the lugger with the land, and swarmed helter-skelter across, not a few stumbling over the edge and falling souse into the water. "Huzzay! huzzay!" shouted the panting Englishmen, as they saw the enemy in flight.