"Fire!" shouted the captain, while a blue light he had just ignited threw a pale unearthly glare over the ship's tafferel, and showed us our new and unexpected enemy It was the pirate's boat, which she had dropped during the partial obscurity I spoke of, intending to board us a-head herself, while the boat's crew attacked us astern. It was fortunate that we happened to hear them--three minutes more and nothing could have saved us. There was a set of the most ferocious-looking desperadoes I had ever seen, armed to the teeth; and the boat (a large one) was crowded with them. Deadly was the effect of our fire. Four or five of the men at the oars were tumbled over on their faces; but their places were instantly supplied by others, who, with loud yells for revenge, bent desperately to their oars. In a few minutes the boat shot up under the mizen-chains, while the bullets that were raining down upon them from above only rendered them more desperate. The living trampled upon the dying and the dead, in their eagerness to board; and, in a thick swarm, the blood-thirsty scoundrels came yelling over the bulwarks. A sharp and well-directed fire staggered them for a moment, and sent several of them to their last account. We now threw aside the muskets, for cutlasses and tomahawks. Hand to hand, foot to foot, desperate and deadly was the struggle. "Down with them, my lads!" shouted Rose. "Hew the blood-thirsty villains to pieces. No quarter! no quarter!--show them such mercy as they would show you!" Short and bloody was the conflict; several of the pirates had been killed, the deck was slippery with blood, and the rest were keeping their ground with difficulty. I had a long and severe hand-to-hand fight with one of them. We had each received desperate wounds, when his foot slipped on the bloody deck. I gave him a severe stroke on the head with a tomahawk, and, after a deadly struggle on the gangway, tumbled him backwards overboard. The moon shone bright out at the moment, and fell full upon his face. Merciful heaven!--my brain reeled, I staggered against a gun, and became insensible--that face, Mr. Stewart, haunts my dreams to this hour with its ghastly, despairing expression. It was the long-lost Henry's--I was my brother's murderer! (Here the poor fellow hid his face in his hands, and groaned with agony. I pitied him from my heart; but I knew that sorrow such as his "will not be comforted" in the moment of its strength; so I sat in silence beside him, till his first burst of grief was over, and then I endeavoured calmly and coolly to reason with him on the subject, and to persuade him, by all the arguments I could think of, that he had no cause to reproach himself with what had happened).