Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/248

 lieutenant were soon wounded and disabled. We paid back the enemy as well as we could; but our men dropped fast; and our fire began to slacken. The schooner's bowsprit got fast in our main rigging, and directly we heard the cry for the boarders. We seized our pikes, and prepared to receive them; but a party of the enemy soon got a.footing on board the brig; wounded the only officer on deck; and drove our men frightened and confused towards the forecastle.

I saw our danger; and the idea of falling again into the hands of the tyrants from whom I had escaped, summoned back my ebbing courage. I seemed to feel a more than human energy spring up within me. I put myself at the head of our yielding and dispirited crew, and fought with all the frantic valor of a mad hero of romance. I struck _ down two or three of the foremost of the enemy; and as they quailed and shrunk before me, I cheered and encouraged my companions, and called on them to charge. My example seemed to inspire them. They rallied at once, and rushed forward with new courage. They drove the enemy before them; tumbled some into the sea; and pressed the others back into their own vessel.

Nor did our success stop here. We boarded in our turn; and the decks of the schooner saw as bloody a battle as had been fought on those of the brig. The fortune of the fight still ran in our favor, and we soon drove the enemy to take refuge on the quarter-deck. We called to them to surrender; — but their captain waving his bloody sword, sternly refused. He encouraged his men to charge once more, and rushed furiously upon us. His cutlass clashed against my pike, and flew from his hand. He slipped, and fell upon the deck; and in a moment, my weapon was at his breast.

He cried for quarter. I thought I knew his face.

"Your name?"

"Osborne!"

"Jonathan Osborne late commander of the Two Sallys?"

"The same!"

"Then die; — a wretch like you deserves no mercy!" and as I spoke I plunged the weapon to his heart, and felt thrilling to the very elbow-joint, the pleasurable sense of doing justice on a tyrant!