"She is a frigate, at least!" exclaimed Marin, with a frightful oath, as he drew his cutlass; "we cannot fight her; she may be French, and the whole affair a mistake, though: hush, silence fore and aft--they are hailing!" "Ho--brig ahoy!" sang out a voice in most unmistakeable English. Jehan Marin ground his yellow teeth--those cursed English! Could he doubt that any but they would first fire and then question? "Hallo!" he replied. "What brig is that?" hailed the officer, through a trumpet, and Quentin felt his heart beating wildly with anxiety and anticipation. Next moment he heard Eugene and the French skipper engaged in a brief but very angry expostulation. "What is the matter?" he asked, as Eugene joined him. "Don't inquire," said he, "lest I blush that I am a Frenchman." "Then your conference concerned me?" "It certainly did, mon ami." "How?" "Marin wished to force you to deceive your countrymen, by replying to them in English--replying with his pistol at your head. _Sangdieu!_ you comprehend?" Before Quentin could reply, the question, "What brig is that? d--n it, you had better look sharp!" came over the black surging water from the foe. "Stand by the braces, and be ready to fill the sails to the yard-heads, and bear away right before the wind," said Marin; then, raising his voice, he shouted a deep and bitter curse through his trumpet. "Hail again," cried the officer; "this is His Britannic Majesty's ship _Medusa_--send a boat off instantly with your skipper and his papers." Instead of complying, Marin daringly gave orders to fire his three 12-pounders on the portside, to fill his yards, and bear right away before the western breeze; but on the appearance of the first portfire glittering on his deck, bang came another shot from this pugnacious stranger, which took his foreyard right in the sling; it came crashing down on deck, breaking the arm of one man and the leg of another; and before M. Marin had made up his mind what to do next, the _Medusa_, a fifty-gun ship, forged a little way ahead of him, as if she meant to sweep his deck or sink him; but neither was her object, for a boat's crew of those "pestilent Englishmen," with pistols in their belts and cutlasses in their teeth, were alongside in a moment, holding on with boat-hooks to the forechains, as the now partly unmanageable brig rose and fell heavily on the black waves of that stormy midnight sea. Another boat-load clung like leeches to the starboard quarter, and in less than five minutes the _Bien Aimé_ was the lawful prize of the British frigate, _Medusa_.