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"Murder as cruel as ever was done," I said, and told him further of the round hole that bored itself in John Ozanne's forehead right before my eyes. "By !" he said again, and more lustily than ever. "I hope to God we don't run across him! Which way did he go, did you say?" "He went off nor'-east, but his prowling-ground is hereabouts. What guns do you carry, sir?" "Ten eighteen-pound carronades."
She is a big ship, sir; close upon sixteen hundred tons, I should call her, and I ought to know; for the Magdalena laid within a cable's length of her for more than a week. She is heavily armed, too; mounts twenty-eight eighteen-pound carronades; and carries on her books a complement of close upon two hundred men. Her name is Nostra Senora del Carmen."
As they neared, Jack opened his fire with his eighteen-pound carronades and long nines. The gun-boats returned his fire, and they were within a quarter of a mile, when Jack shortened sail to his topsails, and a warm engagement took place, which ended in one of the gun-boats being, in a few minutes, dismasted. The frigate, under all canvas, came rapidly up, and her shot now fell thick.
Militia-men were pouring in from the country round about, laborers were at work throwing up breastwork, carriers were dashing about in search of ammunition, and all was activity, until, with the first gleam of daylight, the fire of the ships was re-opened. The Americans promptly responded, and soon two eighteen-pound shot hulled the brig "Despatch."
"We shall soon see now, sir, what she is," observed Rawson to his superior. The bright flash of a gun, and an eighteen-pound shot, which came crashing into the side of the prize left that point very little in doubt. "Man the starboard guns!" cried Mr Calder. "We'll show the Frenchmen that though we have lost our wings we have still got our beaks."
Both parties exerted themselves to their utmost; and when the first boat, with Francisco and Clara, landed, the headmost of the assailants was not much more than half a mile from them; but shallow water intervening there was a delay, which was favourable to the pirates. Hawkhurst landed in his boat as the launch of the Comus fired her eighteen-pound carronade.
In an instant it was answered from the Rose by a column of smoke, and the eighteen-pound ball crashed through the bottom of the defenceless Spaniard. "Who fired? Shame to fire on a sinking ship!" "Gunner Yeo, sir," shouted a voice up from the main-deck. "He's like a madman down here." "Tell him if he fires again, I'll put him in irons, if he were my own brother. Cut away the grapples aloft, men.
These are called "light stuff" and "whizz-bangs" now, in army parlance. They throw only an eighteen-pound shell which carries three hundred bullets, but so fast that they chase one another through the air. There has been so much talk about the need of heavy guns, you might think that eighteen-pounders were too small for consideration.
He did not know much about ships, but she seemed to him a trim and strong craft, carrying, as he judged, about thirty men. A long eighteen-pound cannon was mounted in her stern, but that was to be expected in war, and was common in peace also when one sailed into that nest of pirates, the West Indies.
Henry Gardner, a gunner during the action, stated in his account of the battle that, at this time, of the 140 odd officers and men stationed in the main gun-deck battery at the beginning, over eighty were killed or wounded. There were three or four feet of water in the hold, caused by the Serapis's eighteen-pound shot, which had repeatedly pierced the hull of the Richard.
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