Before a strong wind they foamed side by side, while the guns flashed crimson beneath the shadowy gleam of tall canvas.

Thus they ran for an hour and a half, and then the _Avon_ signaled that she was beaten, with five guns dismounted, forty-two men dead or wounded, seven feet of water in the hold, the magazine flooded, and the spars and rigging almost destroyed.
Blakely was about to send a crew aboard when another hostile brig, forsaking the agile Yankee privateer, came up to help the _Avon_.

The _Wasp_ was perfectly willing to take on this second adversary, but just then a third British ship loomed through the obscurity, and the ocean seemed a trifle overpopulated for safety.

Blakely ran off before the wind, compelled to abandon his prize.

The _Avon_, however, was so badly battered that she went to the bottom before the wounded seamen could be removed from her.