This was the signal for the battery to open; but the grape from the Spider soon silenced it. However, the broadside of the schooner beneath me was raking her with terrible effect, I could see; while they were unable to get a single gun to bear. At length, by lightening her aft, her broadside was got round, so as to return the fire; and now the hellish uproar began in earnest. For several minutes the smoke, that rose boiling amongst the trees at the top of the cliff, concealed all below. I could neither see nor hear any thing but the glancing spouts of red flame, and thunder of the cannon; the bright sparkles and sharp rattle of the small arms blending with the yelling and shouting of the combatants: but the clearing away of the next squall made every thing once more comparatively clear. The battery, I perceived, was again manned, and galling the Spider most awfully; but just as I looked, a boat's crew from her stormed it, driving those who manned it along the sand-bank towards where the Midge lay; and then, having spiked the guns, returned on board. The freshening breeze now forced the Spider over the shoal, and she entered the creek. Giving the Midge a broadside in passing, in the hope of disabling her, so as to leave nothing to cope with but the Mosca; but the sting was not to be so easily taken out of the little vixen. Presently the Spider anchored by the stern, within pistol-shot of the schooner, right athwart his bows, and began to blaze away again. The cheers from her increased, and the shouts of the pirates subsided; but the felucca, which had slipped on being fired at, and warped out between the Spider and the mouth of the cove, now dropped anchor again, with a spring on her cable; and from this vantage ground, began to dash broadside after broadside of round and grape right into her antagonist's stern, enfilading her most fearfully. I could make nothing out of what was going on all this time on the Spider's deck; for although I now and then caught a glimpse of it, during the moments when the strength of the gale cleared away the smoke, and could dimly discern the turmoil of fighting men, and the usual confusion of a ship's deck during a hot engagement; yet the moment my optics began to _individualize_, as Jonathan says, the next discharge would whirl its feathery wreaths aloft, and hide every thing again half way up the masts, that stood out like two blasted pines piercing the mountain mists.