It was about eight o'clock at night that this strange quarrel was picked in the middle of the ocean.

Why cannot men be peaceable on that great common?
Or does nature in those fierce night-brawlers, the billows, set mankind but a sorry example?
After ten minutes' cannonading, the stranger struck, shouting out that half his men were killed.

The Ariel's crew hurrahed.

Boarders were called to take possession.

At this juncture, the prize shifting her position so that she headed away, and to leeward of the Ariel, thrust her long spanker-boom diagonally over the latter's quarter; when Israel, who was standing close by, instinctively caught hold of it--just as he had grasped the jib-boom of the Serapis--and, at the same moment, hearing the call to take possession, in the valiant excitement of the occasion, he leaped upon the spar, and made a rush for the stranger's deck, thinking, of course, that he would be immediately followed by the regular boarders.