bearing down on him with her crew at quarters.

His own men were clustered behind their open ports, matches
lighted, tackles and breechings cast off, crowbars, handspikes,
and sponge-staves in place, gunners stripped to the waist,
powder-boys ready for the word like sprinters on the mark.
Forty-five of them against a hundred and fifty, and Captain
Haraden, debonair, unruffled, walking to and fro with a leisurely
demeanor, remarking that although the Achilles appeared to be
superior in force, "he had no doubt they would beat her if they
were firm and steady and did not throw away their fire."

It was, indeed, a memorable sea-picture, the sturdy Pickering
riding deep with her burden of sugar and seeming smaller than she
really was, the Achilles towering like a frigate, and all Bilbao
turned out to watch the duel, shore and headlands crowded with
spectators, the blue harbor-mouth gay with an immense flotilla of
fishing boats and pleasure craft. The stake for which Haraden
fought was to retake the Golden Eagle prize and to gain his port.
His seamanship was flawless. Vastly outnumbered if it should come
to boarding, he handled his vessel so as to avoid the Achilles
while he poured the broadsides into her. After two hours the
London privateer emerged from the smoke which had obscured the
combat and put out to sea in flight, hulled through and through,
while a farewell flight of crowbars, with which the guns of the
Pickering had been crammed to the muzzle, ripped through her
sails and rigging.

Haraden hoisted canvas and drove in chase, but the Achilles had
the heels of him "with a mainsail as large as a ship of the