"Lights! Lights! Lights!" he was at last repeating, as he looked ahead. "There's a reg'lar fleet of some sort. Our lanterns are all right, I'd say, 'cordin' to the signal-book. Bad for us, though. All those are British men-o'-war, not merchantmen. Port there, Taber; I must be ready to speak this feller that's nearest. Groot, you and Guert go to the rail. Up-na-tan, you and Coco must help. They mustn't hear any English. Both of you can talk Dutch. Some of us'll chatter French and Spanish." There were, however, on board that man-of-war, men who could understand Dutch. One of them was an officer who came to the rail to converse with Groot, after hails had been exchanged. "_Magdalen_, of Rotterdam?" he said. "Tell those monkeys to shut up their jabber, there, so I can hear! From Copenhagen last? You spoke the line-o'-battle ship _Humber_, coming this way? Did you hear anything of that American privateer?" Dutch and French again broke out upon the supposed _Magdalen_, and the Englishman shouted back toward his own quarter-deck:-- "Hurrah! The _Humber_ reports the Yankee cruiser sunk by the revenue cutter _Arran_, Lieutenant Tracy. Hurrah for him! Hard fight! The Yankees fought to the last. Nearly a hundred prisoners. Heave ahead, _Magdalen_! Good news!" Loud Dutch shouts replied to him, and on went the _Noank_, while the other vessels of the British Channel fleet received the welcome tidings as it was passed along from ship to ship. Therefore there was no longer any need that they should be on the watch for the impudent, destructive adventurer from the other side of the Atlantic. She had gone to the bottom! "I feel kind o' queer," thought Guert. "I couldn't ha' done it myself. I had to let Groot do the lying. I'm afraid I'll never do for war. I don't mind a fight, out and out, but somehow I can't help speaking the truth, Dutch or English." Up-na-tan, on the other hand, was in great good-humor over the very Indian-like manner in which the British were being defeated. The Dover gathering of their war-ships was to him a kind of ambush through which he and his friends were cunningly crawling by hiding their feathers and war-paint. They were not exactly crawling, either, for Captain Avery was calling upon his schooner for all the speed she had. "We mustn't lose an inch!" he said. "Their best racers'll be comin' on in our wake in less'n an hour, maybe. I wish this night'd last all day to-morrow." The next morning had not arrived, indeed, when the _Humber_ herself came within hail of one of her Dover assembly friends. Then, shortly, there arose a more noisy jabber in English than had been heard in Dutch and French on the _Noank_, for the genuine news had been told in place of Hans Groot's invention. The actual outcome of the fight between the _Noank_ and the _Arran_ did not call for any enthusiastic cheering. Only a little later, the admiral commanding the fleet summed up the whole affair.