“Ha! ha! Mr. Spaniard, I think we have you at last,” jubilantly exclaimed the captain. “Turn out all hands! Make sail! All hands give chase!” A midshipman scrambled aloft and blithely reported: “A large ship standing athwart us and running right before the wind.” “Larboard! Keep her away! Set the studding-sails!” was the order, and two hundred nimble seamen raced to their stations on deck and in the tops and swarmed out along the yards. Up from below came the little doctor, rubbing his hands and crying: “What, ho! I have won the dollar bag!” “The devil take you and your bag!” roared Lieutenant Archer. “Look yonder! That will fill all our money-bags.” “Two more sail on the larboard beam,” came from aloft. “A whole fleet of twenty sail coming before the wind.” “Confound the luck of it!” growled the captain of the frigate, “this is some convoy or other; but we must try to snap up two or three of them. Haul in the studding-sails. Luff her. Let us see what we can make of them.” They were discovered to be twenty-five sail of Spanish merchantmen, under convoy of three lofty line-of-battle ships, one of which set out in chase of the agile _Phoenix_, which soon showed her heels. A frigate had no business to linger too close to the hundred guns of a ponderous three-decker. The huge Spanish man-of-war lumbered back to the convoy and herded them watchfully while the British nosed about until dark, but found no stray prizes that could be cut out from the flock. In the starlight three ships seemed to be steering a course at some distance from the Spanish fleet, so the frigate gave chase, and came up with a heavy vessel mounting twenty-six guns. “Archer, every man to his quarters,” said the captain. “Light the battle-lanterns and open the gun-ports. Show this fellow our force, and it may prevent his firing into us and killing a man or two.” Across the intervening water rang the challenge from the _Phoenix_: “Ho, the ship ahoy! Lower your sails and bring to instantly, or I will sink you.” Amid the clatter of blocks and creaking of spars the other ship laid her mainyard aback and hung plunging in the wind while to the sharp interrogation her skipper bawled through his trumpet: “This is the British armed merchant ship _Polly_, from Jamaica to New York. What ship are you?” “His Majesty’s forty-four gun frigate _Phoenix_,” was the reply, at which the honest sailors of the merchantman let go three rousing cheers; but a glum old shell-back of the frigate’s crew was heard to mutter: “Oh, damn your huzzas! We took you to be something else.” The _Polly_ had fallen in with the Spanish fleet that same morning, as it turned out, and had been chased all day, wherefore the frigate stood by her until they had run clear of danger. It was the courtesy of the sea, but Lieutenant Archer was unconsoled and he fretfully jotted down in writing to his mother: