The two ships were now only half a cable's length apart, running side by side. Few shots were being returned by the merchantman and all her crew were keeping out of sight behind the solid rail.
"All hands to board her," Bonnet sang out and answering her tiller the _Royal James_ swung over till the two sloops' sides met with a jar. They were fast in an instant and a score of whooping buccaneers swept over the rail. From a place of vantage the boys watched the short, bloody conflict that followed. It seemed that several of the enemy's crew, few as they were at the beginning, had been killed by the explosion of the gun. Only a half-dozen rose to meet the pirate onslaught. Not one asked for mercy, even after Herriot had shot down the captain, and the tide of sea-rovers rushed at and over the little handful of defenders in an overwhelming flood. There was no need of the plank this time. Every man fell fighting and died sword in hand. To the two young prisoners, already sickened with the sight of blood, this wholesale murder of a band of gallant seamen came as a revolting climax. They stared at each other, white-faced as they thought of the fate that threatened them and all honest men who fell into such ruthless hands. It was Bob's first sight of a hand-to-hand sea-battle, and as the last merchant sailor went down under the howling pack he fainted and tumbled into Jeremy's arms. When he came to his senses again the Yankee boy had propped him up behind the companion and was rubbing him vigorously. "I know how you feel," he said in answer to Bob's stammered apology. "It's all right and you've no call to be ashamed. I came near it myself." The Delaware lad, who had been almost as distressed at being guilty of swooning as at the pillage of the merchant sloop, felt a vast relief when he heard Jeremy's words, and quickly got upon his feet once more.
The pirates had cleared the enemy's deck of bodies and blood and now were taking an inventory of the sloop's cargo, if the shouts that came from her hold meant anything. She was a little larger than the _James_ in length and beam, but had carried no armament other than the now damaged stern-chaser. The white letters at her stern declared her the _Fortune_ of New Castle. From what Captain Bonnet said to his sailing-master as they returned over the rail, Jeremy gathered that she had been in light cargo and was not as rich a prize as the _Francis_.