Martin Conisby

In a moment Joanna was on her feet and casting a boat-cloak about herself hasted out of the cabin, bidding Diccon bring me along.

The wind had fallen light though the seas yet ran high; and now being come to the lofty poop, I might behold our crowded decks where was mighty bustle and to-do, casting loose the guns, getting up shot and powder, a-setting out of half-pikes, swords, pistols and the like with a prodigious coming and going; a heaving and yo-ho-ing with shouts and boisterous laughter, whiles ever and anon grimy hands pointed and all heads were turned in the one direction where, far away across the foam-flecked billows, was a speck that I knew for a vessel.

And beholding these pirate rogues, how joyously they laboured, with what lusty cheers they greeted Joanna and clambered aloft upon swaying yards to get more sail on the ship obedient to her shrill commands, I knew a great pity for this ship we were pursuing and a passionate desire that she might yet escape us. I was yet straining my eyes towards the chase and grieving for the poor souls aboard her, when, at word from Joanna, I was seized and fast bound to a ringbolt.

Scarce was this done than Joanna uttered a groan and, clapping her hand to her head, called out for Resolution, and with his assistance got her down to the quarter-deck.

By afternoon the sea was well-nigh calm and the chase so close that we might behold her plainly enough and the people on her decks. Her topmasts were gone, doubtless in the great storm, and indeed a poor, battered thing she looked as she rolled to the long, oily swell. All at once, out from her main broke the golden banner of Spain, whereupon rose fierce outcries from our rogues; then above the clamour rose the voice of Diccon: "Shout, lads--shout for Roger, give tongue to Jolly Roger!" and looking where he pointed with glittering cutlass, I beheld that hideous flag that is hated by all honest mariners.

And now began a fight that yet indeed was no fight, for seeing we had the range of them whereas their shot fell pitifully short, Belvedere kept away and presently let fly at them with every heavy gun that bore, and, as the smoke thinned, I saw her foremast totter and fall, and her high, weather-beaten side sorely splintered by our shot. Having emptied her great guns to larboard the Happy Despatch went about and thundered death and destruction against them with her starboard broadside and they powerless to annoy us any way in return. And thus did we batter them with our great pieces, keeping ever out of their reach, so that none of all their missiles came aboard us, until they, poor souls, seeing their case altogether hopeless, were fain to cry us quarter. Hereupon, we stood towards them, and as we approached I could behold the havoc our great shot had wrought aboard them.