noon
The _ Happy Despatch _ was a great ship of some forty guns besides such smaller pieces as minions , patereros and the like ; she was moreover a notable good sailer and as the hours passed it was manifest we were fast overhauling our quarry . And very pitiful was it to see her crowding sail away from us , to behold her -LRB- as it were -RRB- straining every nerve to escape the horrors in store . Twice she altered her course and twice we did the like , fetching ever nearer until it seemed she was doomed to share the bloody fate of so many others . By noon we were so close that she was plain to see , a middling-size ship , her paint blistered , her gilding tarnished as by a long voyage , and though very taut and trim as to spars and rigging , a heavy-sailing ship and sluggish . A poor thing indeed to cope with such powerful vessel as this _ Happy Despatch _ , for as we closed in I could count no more than six guns in the whole length of her . As to crew she might have been deserted for all I saw of them , save one man who paced her lofty poop , a smallish man in great wig and befeathered hat and in his fist a sword prodigiously long in the blade , which sword he flourished whereat -LRB- as it were a signal -RRB- out from her mizzen wafted the banner of Portugal , and immediately she opened fire on us from her stern-chase guns . But their shooting was so indifferent and artillery so pitiful that their shot fell far short of us .