Dillon and his antagonist had made several cuts at each other, which had been parried with equal skill by both, when the pirate, hearing what Captain Olding shouted out, sprang back apparently to regain his own ship. Dillon, instead of attempting to stop him, warded off a blow aimed at him by another man, and thus enabled the pirate, with a considerable number of his followers, to leap on board his own vessel. The lashings which held her to the _Ouzel Galley_ were at the same moment cut, and before the British seamen could follow she dropped from alongside. Her helm was then put up, and her head-sails filling, she ran off before the wind. Gerald grasped Owen's hand. "Faith, you've had a narrow escape!" he exclaimed. "Indeed, we have," answered Owen; "and, I fear, have lost a large number of our crew. Had you not come up, we should every one of us been killed." "Where are Miss Ferris and her father?" asked Norman Foley, turning round to Owen, whom he now recognised. "They are safe, I trust, below, and will be glad to see you and hear that they have no longer cause for apprehension," answered Owen. "I have too many duties on deck to go." The lieutenant sprang below, just at the moment that Captain Olding ordered the crew of the corvette to return on board and the grappling-irons to be cast loose. "We must chase the pirate and punish him for his audacity," he exclaimed. It was some time, however, before the order could be obeyed and the corvette got clear of the merchantman. Gerald had remained on board. "I ought to tell Mr Foley, or he will be left with you," he said; and he followed his lieutenant below. Before he returned on deck the ships were clear, and the corvette was making sail to go in chase of the pirate. Owen had persuaded Mr Ferris and Ellen to go into the hold, to which they had been hurried when the first shot had been fired by the pirate. Owen had for some time before been suspicious of the strange sail, which he saw standing up on his starboard quarter, and, thinking that she was very probably an enemy's privateer, was not taken altogether unprepared. He had ordered his powder and shot to be brought on deck, and the guns to be loaded and run out ready for action; when, therefore, a shot from the stranger came flying close to his stern, he fired in return, and at the same time making all sail, endeavoured to keep ahead of her. She now fired shot after shot from her foremost guns, and he had no longer any doubt that she was an enemy which had borne down on the fleet, hoping to pick up one or two of the merchant vessels and be off with them before morning. "The fellow has made a mistake in attacking us," observed Owen to his first mate. "His greediness tempted him to attack a big ship--he might have succeeded had he run alongside some of the brigs astern."