All disguise was now over; the enemy showed under their true colours at last, and convinced even the most liberal-minded (including Mr. Mortimer) that they were not English. Though truly if they had desired to appear under their most appropriate colour they should have sailed under the black flag of piracy, for the men on board these frigates were little better than freebooters. Many of the older persons present were minded to take them for a new and enlarged edition of the _Black Prince_—a pirate ship which had eighteen years previously brought his broadside to bear on the town of Fishguard, and kept up an animated fire all day with his six-pounders. However, he caught a Tartar—the master of a smuggling craft, who returned the fire with such goodwill, aided by clever hands and a cannon at the edge of the cliffs, that the _Black Prince_ sheered off. “Set a thief to catch a thief;” but it were ungrateful to think on that proverb. It was this circumstance which caused the fort at Fishguard to be erected, one of whose nine-pounders had just, in courtesy, saluted the frigate, who, not caring to face the other seven guns of the fort in anger, turned round speedily, and rejoined her companions at Carn Gwastad Point without loss of time. On her way she intercepted a sloop which had—perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps from some nobler motive—ventured too near; probably the master of the sloop had not expected this sudden rearward movement—anyway he found himself a prisoner, and his boat a prize. I had jumped up from my reclining position, and stood watching his fate with anxiety and awe, knowing him to be a friend (for I was a Fishguard boy, and intimate with all the varieties of seamen to be found there), but being, at that distance, unable to tell which friend. All the other boats in the bay stood out to sea with all speed, scudding away with white sails stretched, reminding even a matter-of-fact boy who abhorred poetry, similes, and all such inventions of schoolmasters, suggesting even to me the sudden, outspread, white wings of a flock of ducks frightened by the unwelcome appearance, from round the corner, of a fox. They got away safe, but the captive sloop was towed in triumph by the frigate back to Carn Gwastad, where she found her sister ships were already disgorging their freight of soldiers.