thirty-seven men and boys fought like raging devils, with knives,
pistols, cutlases, with their bare fists and their teeth. A few
of the enemy gained the deck, but the privateersmen turned and
killed them. Others leaped aboard and were gradually driving the
Americans back, when the skipper ran to the hatch above the
powder magazine, waving a lighted match and swearing to drop it
in if his crew retreated one step further. Either way the issue
seemed desperate. But again they took their skipper's word for it
and rallied for a bloody struggle which soon swept the decks.

No more than twenty minutes had passed and the battle was won.
The enemy was begging for quarter. One boat had been sunk, three
had drifted away filled with dead and wounded, and the fifth was
captured with thirty-six men in it of whom only eight were
unhurt. The American loss was seven killed and twenty-four
wounded, or thirty-one of her crew of thirty-seven. Yet they had
not given up the ship. The frigate Endymion concluded that once
was enough, and next morning the Prince de Neuchatel bore away
for Boston with a freshening breeze.

Those were merchant seamen also who held the General Armstrong
against a British squadron through that moonlit night in Fayal
Roads, inflicting heavier losses than were suffered in any naval
action of the war. It is a story Homeric, almost incredible in
its details and so often repeated that it can be only touched
upon in this brief chronicle. The leader was a kindly featured
man who wore a tall hat, side-whiskers, and a tail coat. His
portrait might easily have served for that of a New England
deacon of the old school. No trace of the swashbuckler in this
Captain Samuel Reid, who had been a thrifty, respected merchant