It should be noted here that these sloops were single-masted vessels, as was the one in the Providence affair. They were in form and rig very much like the one-masted vessels employed at the time of this writing (1897) in carrying brick from the yards on the Hudson River to New York City, but they were not nearly as large as the brick-carriers, though they probably stood as high out of water, if not higher. A “sloop of war” was a very different vessel, as will appear further on. Captain Moore saw the sloop coming from afar, and realized that the crowd upon her deck meant trouble for him. So, being still anxious to avoid a conflict (just why he was anxious does not appear), he up anchor and once more ran away. But luck was against him--perhaps his frustrated state of mind brought him ill-luck. At any rate, although the wind was in the northwest and he was bound south, he got up his mainsail with the boom to starboard, and soon found himself obliged to jibe it over to port. With a fresh breeze that was a task needing care, and yet, when he came to swing the boom across, he let it go on the run, and it brought up against the backstays with such a shock that it was broken short off in the wake of the rigging. [Illustration: A British Armed Sloop _From a very rare engraving, showing the first lighthouse erected in the United States--on Little Brewster Island, Boston Harbor._] Rendered desperate by this accident, Captain Moore now turned to a merchant schooner that he saw at anchor not far away, and bringing to alongside of her, he robbed her of her boom to replace his own and again headed for the open sea, and then, to still further aid his flight, cut adrift every one of his boats. But it was all in vain, for the sloop was much the swifter vessel, and Captain Moore was at last compelled to fight. The _Margaretta_ was armed with four six-pounders and twenty swivels--short and thick guns firing a one-pound ball, and mounted on swivels placed on the vessel’s rail. It was an armament that should have been more than sufficient to repel the Machias men armed with pitchforks and axes. Moreover, the crew of the _Margaretta_ outnumbered that of the sloop. But there was a difference in the character of the two crews--a difference for which abundant cause will be shown further on--and the issue of the contest was never for a moment in doubt after the haymakers had gone afloat. The first discharge of guns on the schooner killed one man on the sloop. A man of the name of Knight on the sloop returned the fire, using the wall-piece. He was probably from the backwoods and a moose hunter, for he was bright enough and skilful enough to pick off the man at the schooner’s helm. And that shot drove everybody off the schooner’s quarter-deck, so she was left, as a sailor might say, to take charge of herself. Then the schooner broached to, the sloop crashed into her, and the men from Machias, with swinging axes and poised pitchforks, climbed over her rail.