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However, Cap’n Dick had very good luck. One morning, about three leagues N.W. of Roscoff, what should he see but a French privateering craft of about fifty tons (new measurement) with an English trader in tow–a London brig, with a cargo of all sorts, that had fallen behind her convoy and been snapped up in mid-channel. Cap’n Dick had the weather-gauge, as well as the legs of the French chasse-maree. She was about a league to leeward when the morning lifted and he first spied her. By seven o’clock he was close, and by eight had made himself master of her and the prize, with the loss of two men only and four wounded, the Frenchman being short-handed, by reason of the crew he’d put into the brig to work her into Morlaix.

This was first-rate business. To begin with, the brig (she was called the Martha Edwards, of London) would yield a tidy little sum for salvage. The wind being fair for Plymouth, Cap’n Dick sent her into that port–her own captain and crew working her, of course, and thirty Frenchmen on board in irons. And at Plymouth she arrived without any mishap.

Then came the chasse-maree. She was called the Bean Pheasant,[A] an old craft and powerful leaky; but she mounted sixteen guns, the same as the Unity, and ought to have made a better run from her; but first, she hadn’t been able to make her mind to desert her prize pretty well within sight of port; and in the second place her men had a fair job to keep her pumps going. Cap’n Dick considered, and then turned to old Jacka.

[Footnote A: Probably Bienfaisant.]

“I’m thinking,” said he, “I’ll have to put you aboard with a prize crew to work her back to Polperro.”

“The Lord will provide,” said Jacka, though he had looked to see a little more of the fun.

So aboard he went with all his belongings, not forgetting his wife’s sausages and the stug of butter and the cinder-sifter. Towards the end of the action about fifteen of the Johnnies had got out the brig’s large boat and pulled her ashore, where, no doubt, they reached, safe and sound. So Jacka hadn’t more than a dozen prisoners to look after, and prepared for a comfortable little homeward trip.

“I’ll just cruise between this and Jersey,” said Cap’n Dick; “and at the week-end, if there’s nothing doing, we’ll put back for home and re-ship you.”

So they parted; and by half-past ten Cap’n Jacka had laid the Bean Pheasant’s head north-and-by-west, and was reaching along nicely for home with a stiff breeze and nothing to do but keep the pumps going and attend to his eating and drinking between whiles.

The prize made a good deal of water, but was a weatherly craft for all that, and on this point of sailing shipped nothing but what she took in through her seams; the worst of the mischief being forward, where her stem had worked a bit loose with age and started the bends. Cap’n Jacka, however, thought less of the sea–that was working up into a nasty lop–than of the weather, which turned thick and hazy as the wind veered a little to west of south. But even this didn’t trouble him much. He had sausages for breakfast and sausages for dinner, and, as evening drew on, and he knew he was well on the right side of the Channel, he knocked out his pipe and began to think of sausages for tea.

Just then one of the hands forward dropped pumping, and sang out that there was a big sail on the starboard bow. “I b’lieve ’tis a frigate, sir,” he said, spying between his hands.

So it was. She had sprung on them out of the thick weather. But now Cap’n Jacka could see the white line on her and the ports quite plain, and not two miles away.

“What nation?” he bawled.