Hillo! my eyes deceive me, _or_ DOWN _goes the blue ensign on board of the Spider_!!! So, fare thee well, Henry de Walden; well I wot, my noble boy, you have not lived to see it--Strike to pirates!--No! no! _How_ could I be such a fool? It is but the peak haulyards that are shot away, and there goes a gallant fellow aloft to reeve or splice them again, amidst a storm of round, and grape, and musket balls. He cannot manage it, nor can the gaff be lowered, for something jams about the throat haulyards, which he struggles in vain to overhaul--then let it stick; for now he slides down the drooping spar, to knot the peak haulyards _there_. Look how he sways about, as the gaff is violently shaken by the flapping of the loosened sail; for both vangs and brails are gone. Mind you are not jerked overboard, my fine fellow--murder! he drops like lead into the pall of smoke beneath, shot dead by the enemy's marksmen. Another tries it--better luck this time, for he reaches the gaff-end, and there the peak rises slowly but steadily into the air once more, the ensign flashing out of the smoke that had concealed it, like the blue lightning from a thundercloud, and once more streaming gallantly in the wind. Whew! the unfortunate bunting clips into it again to leeward, vanishing like a dark-winged sea-bird dipping into a fogbank--the ensign haulyards are shot away--worse and more of it--down goes the maintopmast next, royal mast, pennant and all; snapped off by a cannon-ball as clean as a fishing-rod--no fun in all this, any how--Well done, my small man--a _wee_ middy, in the very nick, emerges from the sulphureous cloud below, with a _red_ ensign, to replace the blue one, fluttering and flaming around him, as if he were on fire. He clambers up the mainrigging, and seizes the meteor there--_seizes!_ nay, he _nails_ it to the mast. He descends again, and disappears, leaving the flag flaring in the storm from the masthead, as if the latter had been a blazing torch. I began now seriously to fear that De Walden was getting too much of it between the Midge and the schooner, when I saw fire and thick smoke rise up near me, as if bursting from the afterpart of the latter vessel; and, at the moment, the increasing gale broke the Spider's spring, that a shift of wind had also compelled her to use, to keep her in her station,--so that, from being athwart his hawse, she now swung with her bows slantingly towards her opponent's broadside, and lay thus for some time, again terribly galled by a heavy raking fire, until the men in the Mosca were literally scorched from their guns by the spreading flames. I could now see that the pirate crew were leaving her; so I slipped down near the edge of the cliff, to have a better view of what was going on beneath, but keeping as much out of the line of fire as possible.