With this heroic resolve in contemplation, he paced the deck. There was not a breath of wind. The ship rolled a little uneasily, the timbers creaking and blocks rattling aloft, while the few sails that were set slatted against the masts and rigging occasionally in that irritating fashion with which all seamen are familiar. At various distances round him were the enemy's vessels, few of them probably out of gunshot, and some very near. About an hour before daybreak Du Guay Trouin noticed a dark line above the horizon ahead of his ship; he watched it carefully, and felt convinced that a breeze was coming from that quarter. Calling the crew quietly on deck, he made sail, braced the yards up, and with one or two of the huge oars or "sweeps" provided in those days, he got the ship's head round so as to catch the breeze in a favourable manner in case it should come. And it did come: at first a breath, which barely gave the ship steerage-way; then a little stronger--she steals ahead, two knots, three knots; the Englishmen are all taken aback, with their topsails lowered, their yards braced anyhow. Before they can make and trim sail the _Jason_ is clear of the ruck of them, a good gunshot clear! The _Worcester_ was once more the only one to tackle her, and was soon shaken off--by noon she was fast dropping astern; and, says Du Guay Trouin, "I looked on myself as though risen from the dead." Well he might do, too. And what were all those Englishmen thinking about, each ship with an officer in charge of the deck? One would imagine that they could see a breeze coming as well as a Frenchman could. But Du Guay Trouin had one essential element of success about him--- _he never threw away a chance._ He died in 1736. France may well be proud of him. Think of a lad of one-and-twenty, pressed by half a dozen ships among the Scilly Islands, conceiving that plan of boarding and capturing the _Adventure_! That incident alone is sufficient to mark him as excelling by many degrees the average--nay, the more than average--fighting seaman. CHAPTER XV JACQUES CASSARD Among the less well-known French privateersmen is Jacques Cassard, a native of Nantes, where there stands to this day a commemorative statue of him. He was born in 1672, and so was a contemporary of Du Guay Trouin. The son of a seafarer, young Jacques was predestined to a similar life, but there is very little known of his early doings. He appears to have commenced as a privateer at the early age of fourteen, and he must evidently have established, during the following ten years, a reputation for skill and daring, for when he was five-and-twenty he was selected to command the bomb-ship in an expedition against Carthagena, under De Pointis, in 1697.