"I do not know who you are, or where you come from, men, but you have certainly saved us from capture. I did not know it was the Annette until it was too late to draw off, or I should not have engaged her; for she is the strongest lugger that sails out of Granville, and carries double our weight of metal, with twice as strong a crew; but whoever you are, I thank you most heartily. I am half owner of the schooner, and should have lost all I was worth, to say nothing of perhaps having to pass the next five years in a French prison." "We are two British officers," Terence said. "We have escaped from a French prison, and were making our way to Jersey when we saw that lugger coming after us, and should certainly have been captured had you not come up; so we thought the least we could do was to lend you a hand." "Well, gentlemen, you have certainly saved us. Jacques Bontemps, the captain of the Annette, was an old acquaintance of mine. He commanded a smaller craft before he got the Annette, and we have had two or three fights together. "So it was you whom I saw in that little boat! Of course, we made out that the lugger was chasing you, though why they should be doing so we could not tell; but we thought no more about you after the fight once began, and were as astonished as the Frenchmen when you swept their bow. I just glanced round and saw what looked like two French fishermen, and thought that you must be two of the lugger's crew who, for some reason or other, had turned the guns against their own ship. "It will be a triumph, indeed, for us when we enter Saint Helier. The Annette has been the terror of our privateers. Fortunately she was generally away cruising, and many a prize has she taken into Granville. I have had the luck to recapture two of them, myself; but when she is known to be at home we most of us keep in port, for she is a good deal more than a match for any craft that sails out from Saint Helier. "She only went into Granville yesterday, and I thought that there was no fear of her being out again, for a week or so. When I saw her, I took her for a smaller lugger that sails from that port, and which is no more than a match for us. The fact is, we were looking at her chasing you, and wondering if we should be in time, instead of noticing her size. It was not until she fired that first broadside that we found we had caught a tartar. We should have run, if there had been a chance of getting away; but she is a wonderfully fast boat, and we knew that our only chance was to knock away one of her masts. "And now, we will be making sail again. You must excuse me for a few minutes." In half an hour the main halliards had been repaired, and the sail hoisted. When other damages were made good the captain, with half his crew, went on board the lugger; and the two vessels sailed together for Jersey. Terence and his companion had accompanied the captain.