The look-out in the foretop shouted suddenly a sail. The two started and turned to the loud cry: and there, forged unexpectedly out of the mists on their larboard bow, rode a huge carack. She was so close, within a mile or two, that it seemed she must have blundered half-asleep into their ken; or perhaps, like some majestic leviathan, had disdained to alter her course for such insignificant fry. She swam as if deep-laden, flying the Spanish colours, and her burden was 300 tons, if an ounce. In a moment the _Tiger’s_ deck was swarming, and the Admiral’s orders issued sharp and violent. He grunted with satisfaction, rubbing his hands. Here was amends for much inglorious trafficing for one who, according to a contemporary chronicler, was ‘very unquiet in his mind, and greatly affected to war,’ and who would always rather, in a question of acquisition, plunder than barter. Nor were those he commanded less excited over the prospect than himself. At a breath all peevish humours were forgotten, all mortuary moods and talk of death and failure. The light of battle sprang to Clerivault’s eyes; with a silent clap of his hand on Brion’s shoulder, he hurried below to equip himself for the coming fray. Russe passed him, hastening to his friend’s side. ‘Good sooth, a monster!’ he said: ‘and with a double row of teeth, like a shark. There will be some credit in capturing _her_.’ He never doubted the issue. It was the spirit destined to wrest from the Spaniard his long undisputed sovereignty of the seas. They luffed and made for the stranger, overhauling her hand over hand. In the light wind blowing they sailed two knots for her one. Every soul on board stood at the prick of expectancy; each gunner waited at his piece, linstock in hand. At long range they bore up and held away, running parallel with, but a little abaft, the carack, which kept her course, as if in stately indifference. At that distance she towered above them, a very behemoth of the deep. Suddenly there was a double flash from her sides, a slam, and a rending crash. A spout of splinters went up from the _Tiger_, almost under Brion’s feet, it seemed. A human scream or two, mingling horribly with the uproar, for an instant rocked his heart; and then fury and fire, as if over some damnable wickedness, blazed in his blood. He saw red, and screeched with frenzied triumph as the _Tiger_, shooting abeam of the other, ran up her blazing ensign, and simultaneously delivered her whole larboard broadside into the quivering hull of the monster; then yawed, and, letting the enemy forge ahead, passed under her stern, and gave her the other broadside full through her cabin windows, raking her fore and aft, and making her stagger as if she had struck on a rock.