"Panza told me that he"d heard it said that her full complement was two hundred and twenty-six men, countin" officers and all. But if we can only manage to surprise "em, and get aboard afore the alarm"s given, I don"t reckon that they"ll give us so very much trouble," answered h.o.a.rd.
"We must risk that," remarked I. "And now, as you happen to be here, there is nothing to detain us; we may, therefore, as well be moving.
The sooner that we get this battery business over, the better."
"Very well, sir, I"m quite ready," answered h.o.a.rd. "I suppose you didn"t happen to think of slippin" a cutlash, or a pair of pistols, or anything into the boat for me, sir?" he continued.
"Oh, yes, I did!" said I. "Thomson, the c.o.xswain of the gig, will fit you out. And you had better come in the gig with me, as we shall probably want you to act as pilot."
"All right, sir, I"ll do that with all the pleasure in life," was the answer. And therewith he clambered noiselessly into the boat and made his way aft to the stern-sheets, where I presently found him with a naked cutla.s.s in his hand, the edge of which he was testing with his thumb, and mumbling his satisfaction at its condition.
We now shoved off, and the gig leading, gave way at a long steady stroke, for the southern extremity of the island, which we reached within the hour, although it was a pull of fully three miles. Arrived at the low point, and leaving each boat in charge of a couple of men, we landed; and as I was marshalling the men upon the beach, the blackness of the night was momentarily dispelled by a blaze of vivid lightning that flashed from the clouds immediately overhead; and almost simultaneously with the flash there came a crash of thunder that seemed to make the solid ground beneath our feet vibrate and tremble. This was horribly annoying; for to advance upon the battery in the midst of a storm of lightning was almost certainly to betray ourselves, while time was now of some importance, I being anxious to be aboard the galleon not much later than two o"clock in the morning, that being the hour when man is supposed to sleep his soundest and to be least liable to awake prematurely.
However, there was nothing for it but to wait, so I hurriedly ordered the men to lie down behind the ridge of sand which formed the junction of the beach with the gra.s.s-land; and there we crouched, with the lightning flashing and quivering all about us for fully a quarter of an hour. Then down came the rain, not in drops, but in sheets, with the lightning flashing and darting and quivering hither and thither through it, until we appeared to be enveloped in a gigantic diamond; so exquisitely beautiful were the glancing colours of the lightning through the rain. Of course we were wetted to the skin in an instant, but that did not very greatly matter, as our pistols and ammunition were carried in waterproof cases; moreover, the rain afforded us an excellent curtain under cover of which to advance; so at a word from me the men sprang to their feet, and we pushed rapidly forward. The battery was but a quarter of a mile from the spot where we had landed, and so accurately had I taken my bearings that, in about five minutes after we began to move, the structure loomed up, dark and grim, before us. h.o.a.rd had informed me that its landward sides were protected by a deep moat, connected with the sea, and spanned by a drawbridge; and it was for this bridge that I was keeping a sharp look-out. I was so close aboard of it before I saw it that three or four paces sufficed to carry me to the sentry-box at its landward end; and just as I reached this box a vivid flash of lightning revealed its interior, and there, bolt upright, stood a tall Spanish grenadier, with his musket resting in a corner of the hut, close to his hand. I realised instantly that the briefest period of hesitation now meant our undoing; for as I had seen the soldier, he had also undoubtedly seen me; so the man no sooner stood revealed before me than, with one bound, I was in the sentry-box with him, one hand grasping his throat to prevent him from crying out, while with the other I seized his musket and pa.s.sed it out to the man next behind me. The soldier struggled manfully, and did his utmost to free his throat, but I held him fast, and in so fierce a grip that ere many seconds were over I felt him sink powerless to the ground. To lash him, hands and feet together, like a trussed fowl, with his own cross-belts, and to gag him with a good-sized stone, secured in his mouth by a strip slashed from his own coat, was but the work of two or three minutes; and when at length, satisfied that the fellow was secure and harmless, I emerged from the box, I had the satisfaction of finding that Tom Hardy,--now acting as the schooner"s second mate,--had promptly followed my example by securing the sentry at the far side of the drawbridge.
We were now consequently in possession of this structure, and that, too, without the slightest alarm having been given to the garrison, and in another minute all hands of us stood inside the battery, which was a fine, solid earthwork, with casemates, very like the battery that we had seized at Abervrach harbour. Unlike the French battery, however, all the casemates were open, with the exception of four, two of which were converted into the officers" quarters, while the other two const.i.tuted the magazine; and in the shelter of these open casemates the artillerymen were slumbering soundly in hammocks, despite the storm, with their muskets piled under the shelter of a verandah that ran all along the front of the casemates. To possess ourselves of these muskets, and to heave them into the moat was the work of but a few minutes; and when this was done I went up on to the platform, and with my own hands effectually spiked every one of the guns. It was a most unaccountable thing to me that the whole garrison should have slept so soundly through the terrific crash and roar of the thunder, and the blaze of the lightning; but they did, perhaps because they were accustomed to that kind of disturbance; and as the thunder was practically continuous, I had no difficulty in carrying out my operations without a single clink of the leather-covered hammer being audible.
The battery was now useless for some hours at least; and, since we had been so fortunate as to render it so without any of the garrison becoming any the wiser, I thought it would be an advantage to leave them in ignorance for a few hours longer, I therefore quietly withdrew my men, and, taking the two gagged and bound sentinels with us, effected an orderly retreat to the beach.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
THE CAPTURE OF NOSTRA SENORA DEL CARMEN.
Arrived at the boats, we lost not a moment in tumbling into them and getting under way again, for time was now a precious commodity, there being still a journey of some four miles before us ere the galleon could be reached. But, once fairly clear of the Boca, or channel, we should be able to use our sails, which I had taken the precaution to have placed in the boats, and then we should make good progress, while the men would be resting.
The first question for consideration, however, was what to do with our two prisoners. This was speedily settled by h.o.a.rd, who suggested that they should be landed upon a small islet, called Brujas Island, situate on the opposite side of the harbour, and lying but little out of our regular way. This we did, of course first casting them loose and taking the gags out of their mouths; but although they were thus freed from actual physical restraint they remained as harmless as before, so far as we were concerned, for Brujas Island was uninhabited, and separated from the mainland by two channels which, although only narrow, were so dangerous, in consequence of the sharks with which the harbour was infested, that the Spaniards were not at all likely to imperil their lives by attempting to swim them. There they were, therefore, harmless enough, so far as we were concerned, until morning, when probably some pa.s.sing fisherman might be attracted by their cries, and would release them. But, whether released or not, I had very little fear that they would attempt to return to the battery and give the alarm there; the fact that they had allowed themselves to be surprised and made prisoners would be accounted by their officers an unpardonable crime; and the probability was that, when released from the island, they would take to the forest and make for the interior to escape punishment.
By the time that we had landed these two unfortunate men the thunder- storm had pa.s.sed away to seaward, the crash of the thunder had become modulated to a booming rumble, and a steady, drenching downpour of rain had set in; the clouds overhead, however, were not nearly so heavy and black as they had been previous to the outbreak of the storm, and there was sufficient light to enable us to see where we were going. We accordingly shoved off from Brujas in high spirits, and, hoisting our sails, headed up the harbour. The land wind was blowing, although not very strongly, and when we had been under way about half an hour we began to look out for the galleon. h.o.a.rd was the first to see her-- probably because he knew best of us all where to look for her,--and, the moment that she was sighted, the gig"s sails were lowered, as a signal for the other boats to close round us. This they immediately did, when I repeated, in a low voice, the orders that I had already given before leaving the schooner, in order that every man might know exactly what duty was expected of him, and do it. Then, having thus refreshed every man"s memory, I gave the order to draw cutla.s.ses and paddle quietly alongside.
A few minutes sufficed to take us to the galleon; and a fine, stately, n.o.ble-looking craft she was, towering out of the water like a line-of- battle ship; her lofty masts and wide-spreading yards seeming to pierce the sky and lose themselves among the few stars that now came twinkling mistily out, here and there overhead.
We got alongside without being challenged--to my great surprise; and, half of us boarding her to port and the other half to starboard, in less than a minute we were all on deck, and gliding softly and noiselessly as shadows here and there; some securing the fore-scuttle, others the companions and sky-lights; while others again were briskly swarming up the shrouds to loose the canvas; the carpenter--with his axe specially sharpened for the occasion--at once stationing himself by the cables, ready to cut them at a sign from me, while two men placed themselves at the ponderous and highly-ornamented wheel.
The singular circ.u.mstance that we had succeeded in getting alongside without being challenged was fully accounted for by the fact that not a single soul was on deck when we had glided in over the galleon"s lofty bulwarks. If an anchor watch had been set, the men composing it had--as h.o.a.rd had predicted--quietly ignored their duty, in the absence of the officers, by turning in and leaving the ship to take care of herself.
The surprise was complete; the galleon had fallen into our hands without so much as a single blow being struck. Of course, there was the crew below to be reckoned with still, but meanwhile they were close prisoners and asleep; and, even in the event of their awaking at once and proceeding to force their way on deck, it would be some time ere they would be able to break out; and by that time, if all went well, we should be far enough from the neighbourhood of the town to render any prospect of a.s.sistance from that quarter practically out of the question. What I most feared was that somebody on board one or another of the many craft that were anch.o.r.ed in our immediate vicinity might notice the operation of loosing and setting the galleon"s canvas, and suspecting something to be wrong, man a boat and go ash.o.r.e to give the alarm; in which case we should soon have three or four swift galleys after us; when we were likely enough to find ourselves in an exceedingly awkward sc.r.a.pe. That, however, was a danger that we had to face. And after all it was not so very great; for if no anchor watch was being kept on board the galleon, how much less likely was it that such a watch would be kept on board the comparatively valueless coasters by which we were surrounded.
I had carefully explained to my crew beforehand what it was that we had to do; and I had also given instructions that the whole of the work was to be carried forward in absolute silence, no one calling out unless the necessity for so doing was urgent. Consequently, from the moment when we first dropped in over the bulwarks, not a sound save the soft patter of m.u.f.fled feet was heard aboard the galleon until first the topsails and then the courses were let fall, when, of course, there arose a sound of canvas fluttering in the wind, which, to my excited imagination, seemed loud enough to wake the dead. Then came the sharp cheep, cheep of sheaves upon their pins as the topsails were sheeted home and the yards mast-headed, followed by a still louder flapping of canvas as the jib was hoisted. Then came the dull, heavy crunch of the carpenter"s axe as he smote at the cables. I suppose it was these sounds that awakened the galleon"s crew, for while the carpenter was still hacking away there arose from the interior of the fore-scuttle a loud knocking, and the m.u.f.fled sounds of voices angrily demanding that the hatch should be lifted. h.o.a.rd, however, had been standing by, in expectation of something of this sort, and the moment that there came a pause in the knocking and shouting I heard him informing the prisoners that the ship was in the hands of the English, and that unless they--the Spaniards-- immediately ceased their row the whole lot of them would be quickly subjected to certain dreadful pains and penalties which I but imperfectly understood. The threat, however, had the desired effect of quieting our prisoners, who promptly subsided into silence.
It was a somewhat difficult matter to get so big a ship under way in the rather thickly crowded anchorage, and we were obliged at the outset to make a rather long and complicated stern-board, which entailed two or three very narrow shaves of fouling one or another of the craft that were in our way. The sky, however, was clearing fast, the stars were shining brightly through great and rapidly increasing rifts in the clouds and affording us enough light to see what we were about; moreover, the land breeze was piping up strong, and whistling shrilly through our rigging, so that as soon as we were able to swing the yards and get headway upon the lumbering old wagon of a craft, we managed well enough, and contrived to sc.r.a.pe clear of everything; and that, too, without attracting any very serious amount of attention, only one hail-- and that, apparently, from somebody more than half drunk--saluting us as we glided with a slow and stately movement out of the anchorage toward the somewhat contracted pa.s.sage between the island of Tierra Bomba and the Main.
Once fairly clear of the anchorage, and the shipping that enc.u.mbered it, we crowded sail upon the old hooker, and were soon booming down toward the chain of shoals at the rate of fully seven knots. And now h.o.a.rd once more made himself useful by undertaking to pilot us through the shoals, which he did very successfully, hugging Brujas Island pretty closely, and then bearing almost square away for the Boca Chica channel.
A short half-hour sufficed to carry us to the inner end of it; and here our utmost vigilance was called into play in the navigation of the sharply-winding pa.s.sage. But we managed to achieve it successfully, all still being dark and silent in the San Fernando battery as we pa.s.sed it, and after an anxious ten minutes I had the satisfaction of feeling _Nostra Senora del Carmen_ rising and falling ponderously upon the swell of the open Caribbean.
In antic.i.p.ation of the possibility that we might be pursued, I now shaped a course due west, right off the land, that being, in my opinion, the direction in which we were least likely to be looked for, and when we had been running to leeward for about half an hour, and had made an offing of nearly four miles, I burned three portfires simultaneously as a preconcerted signal to the schooner that all was well and that she was to follow us, and an hour later she came foaming up on our weather quarter and hailed us. We now hove-to and sent alongside her the boats that had hitherto been towing astern; and as soon as they were hoisted in we both filled away once more, still standing straight off the land, so that when day dawned I had the satisfaction of finding that we had run the coast out of sight.
We had, of course, long ere this secured our prisoners, numbering in all two hundred and twenty-six men, and now the problem was how to get rid of them; for I did not at all care to have so many men aboard who would require to be constantly watched in order that they might not rise upon and overpower us at some unguarded moment. Happily, the problem was soon solved; for about noon we sighted a trading felucca, bound from Porto Bello to Santa Marta, which the schooner brought to, and as she proved to be a fine, roomy craft I hove-to, lowered the boats, and transhipped our prisoners into her, despite the protests of her unhappy captain, who called all the saints to witness that the food he had on board would not suffice to feed so many men more than a couple of days at most. This objection I met by pointing out to him that he could bear up for Tolu, on the Gulf of Morrosquillo, which he could easily fetch in twenty-four hours, and so left him to settle the matter in whichever way seemed best to him.
As soon as we had parted company with the felucca, and were fairly under way again, I set to work to search for the treasure, of the actual presence of which on board I had as yet had no time to satisfy myself.
h.o.a.rd was of opinion that it would be found stowed away in a strong-room beneath the cabin deck, in the position usually occupied by the lazarette, and there, sure enough, I found such a room--a solidly built structure of hard timber, fully six inches thick, plated with iron, the door being secured by three ma.s.sive iron bars pa.s.sed through thick iron bands, and secured at either end by heavy iron padlocks, six in all, the keyholes of which were sealed with great seals the size of the palm of my hand. These seals I broke without a particle of hesitation or reverence for the great personage who had caused them to be placed there, and then inst.i.tuted a hunt for the keys, which resulted, as I had feared it would, in failure. The keys were doubtless at that moment at Cartagena, in the possession of the unfortunate captain of the ship, or in the hands of the official to whose custody the treasure had been confided. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to set the armourer to work upon the padlocks, and by dint of hard work he managed to get them off and the door open by eight bells in the afternoon watch.
The room, when opened, proved to be an apartment measuring about five feet each way, and it was lined inside as well as outside, with thick sheets of iron. But it was more than half full of gold ingots; that is to say the ingots were packed in rows of twenty each athwart the room.
There were five rows of twenty each, const.i.tuting a tier, and the ingots were stored eight tiers high; so that, if the lower tiers contained the same number of ingots as the top tier, as was pretty certain to be the case, there were eight hundred ingots of solid gold, each weighing approximately half a hundredweight! the ingots being made uniformly of this size and weight in order that they might be conveniently transported from the mines to the coast by means of trains of Indians.
I was struck dumb with astonishment and admiration as I stood gazing at the pile of dingy packages, each ingot being tightly sewn up in a wrapper of raw hide. I could scarcely believe my eyes for the moment.
Twenty tons of gold! Why, there was a fabulous fortune before me! I reckoned its value roughly, and found that, at the then ruling price of gold, the value of the packages before me approximated well on toward three millions sterling.
Nor was this all. There was a heavy, oaken, iron-bound case, measuring about two feet square by about a foot and a half high. This, I presumed, contained the uncut gems which h.o.a.rd had told me were to be sent home in this lumbering old treasure-tub. Man alive! when I came to realise in a measure the approximate value of all this wealth, I tell you I was frightened; fairly terrified to think that I was now responsible for it all. For upon me devolved the task of conveying this enormous wealth safely across the ocean and delivering it into the hands of my owner, to be by him subdivided into the shares to which each of us was ent.i.tled. I believe I never realised so vividly as at that moment the manifold perils of the sea: the peril of fire, of tempest, of shipwreck, and of the enemy. And to think that it had all been intrusted to a bottom that, under the most favourable circ.u.mstances, could hardly be expected to get up a speed of ten knots, and that consequently was open to capture by the first fast-sailing picaroon that happened to fall in with her. It was positively frightful to merely contemplate such a very likely eventuality. "But, thank goodness,"
thought I, "that danger is easily provided against!" And, going on deck, I immediately ordered the ship to be hove-to, and the launch hoisted out, and I also signalled the schooner to close.
It was a lovely evening; the water quite smooth, and a gentle westerly breeze blowing. I determined, therefore, to seize that opportunity to transfer the whole of the treasure to the _Sword Fish_, in the hold of which craft I considered it would be far safer than where it was then.
And, that done, I determined to make my way, first to Jamaica, to pick up a few more hands to help in working the galleon, and then to make the best of my way home without risking the loss of all by engaging in any more fighting, however tempting might be the opportunity. The men went to work cheerily; easily divining my motive for transhipping the treasure, and being, of course, each in his own degree, as anxious for its safety as I was. Moreover, the galleon"s launch was a fine big lump of a boat; so we managed to tranship the whole and get it safely stowed away before sundown. That night I resumed command of the schooner, and turned the command of the galleon over to Saunders, who was a thoroughly steady, reliable fellow.
At midnight, as arranged by me prior to leaving the galleon, both craft hauled up to the northward for Jamaica, and we then found that--so slow was the galleon, with the wind anywhere but on her quarter--the schooner, under mainsail, stay foresail, and jib, was quite able to keep pace with her even when she was carrying topgallant-sails, above which the galleon set nothing. This promised a long, wearisome voyage across the Atlantic, and doubly justified me in transhipping the treasure to the schooner. Nevertheless I looked forward with a great deal of pride to the day when I should take the prize into Weymouth harbour. It was early days, however, to think of that as yet, for there was the whole of the Atlantic and two-thirds of the Caribbean between ourselves and home, with who could say how many chances of shipwreck or capture before that distance could be traversed.
And, as though to enforce the recollection of the latter contingency more effectively upon us, the dawn next morning revealed a long, snake- like two-masted craft hovering some five miles to windward, which I by and by made out to be one of those pestilent war-galleys which were apt to prove such formidable antagonists, and to give so much trouble in such moderate weather as we were then experiencing. I judged that this galley, which was under sail when first sighted, had come out from Cartagena in search of us, and from the fact that she did not at once bear down upon us, but hung persistently to windward, I conjectured that she was not alone, that she had one or more consorts somewhere to windward, and that, upon fully identifying the galleon, she would lower her sails, out sweeps, and be off to windward for help to tackle us.
This I was most anxious to prevent, if possible, and after considering awhile I hit upon a plan which I thought might serve. I accordingly closed with the galleon, and ordered Saunders to at once bear up before the wind and run away to leeward, piling all the sail possible upon the old tub, to convey the impression that he was terribly frightened, and was exceedingly anxious to escape recapture. At the same time all sail was crowded upon the schooner, the precaution being taken, however, to tow an old spare foresail overboard, abreast the lee gangway, which had the effect of causing the schooner to sail as if she were water-logged.
I also shaped a course with the schooner diverging about four points from that of the galleon.
The latter now, of course, ran away from us, hand over hand; while now the galley manifested a disposition to edge down a little and get a nearer look at us both. This was precisely what I wanted, my hope being that our precipitate retreat would be construed by the Spaniards as a sign of weakness and fear on our part, and that the commander of the galley would thus be inveigled into attempting the recapture of the galleon single-handed, instead of sharing the honour with his consorts.
I antic.i.p.ated that, if he should yield to my blandishments, he would make a dash straight for the galleon without troubling himself about the schooner, the sluggish movements of which would render her in his eyes an altogether contemptible adversary, utterly beneath his notice, and only to be tackled and submitted to an exemplary punishment after the recapture of the galleon had been achieved. And, should I prove correct in this line of reasoning, he would run away to leeward after the galleon, when I should have him exactly where I wanted him, namely, to leeward of the schooner, when it would be my business to see that he did not again get to windward of us.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
I END MY CAREER AS A PRIVATEERSMAN.
For fully an hour the galley dallied with the tempting bait that I had thrown out, now edging down towards us for a few minutes, and anon hauling her wind again, her commander apparently suspecting some ruse on our part. But at length our seemingly single-hearted anxiety to place as much water as possible between ourselves and him, together with the fact that both vessels were perceptibly increasing their distance from him--the galleon fairly rapidly, the schooner much less so,--got the better of his prudence; and, suddenly putting up his helm, he came booming along down to leeward, wing and wing, steering a course that, as I had expected, would soon carry him alongside the _Senora_.
The moment that it became apparent that he was in earnest I sent my scanty crew to quarters, the long thirty-two was cleared away and loaded, and all hands stood by to haul inboard again the sail that had hitherto served so efficiently as a drag. But, beyond this preparation, no other change was made, the schooner still adhering to her course, as though only anxious to escape from so formidable an adversary.
About half an hour after bearing up, by which time the galley had neared us to within about a mile and a half, she fired a shotted gun in the direction of the galleon, and hoisted her colours. Saunders, to whom I had communicated my intentions, took no notice whatever of this; nor did we. The shot fell a long way short, and was of course merely intended as a hint for the galleon to heave-to. Another quarter of an hour brought the galley down abreast of us, and about a mile distant, but she took no notice whatever of us, her object evidently being to recapture the galleon first, and so secure--as they would suppose--the treasure that had been embarked aboard her; after which her commander would doubtless have a word to say to the schooner which had so audaciously presumed to appropriate, even temporarily, the gold of His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain. As the galley swept past us I observed, with keen satisfaction, that she was not going much over eight knots; and I estimated that, when we should have got rid of our drag, we should be fully a knot and a half better than she was. Of course it would be in her power to rig out her sweeps to increase her speed; but I considered that, with the breeze that was then blowing, they would be practically useless except when going directly head to wind; and what I had to do was so to manoeuvre the schooner as to cut off her escape in that direction. What I was chiefly afraid of was that the consorts of the galley--for I was confident that she had consorts somewhere or other-- were close enough at hand to hear the sound of firing; and to make certain upon this point I shinned up to the royal-yard and had a good look round, and I was greatly relieved to find that there was nothing in sight.
I allowed her to get about a mile to leeward of us, and then, instead of hauling our drag inboard, as I had at first intended, we cut it adrift and let it go altogether, at the same time jibbing over our main-boom and giving chase to the galley. For a s.p.a.ce of perhaps ten minutes no perceptible notice was taken, by those on board the galley, of our change of tactics; but by the end of that time our sudden and--to the Spaniards--unaccountable improvement in speed had become so marked that it could not fail to attract attention; and presently signs became observable that it was occasioning considerable uneasiness. The galley"s sweeps--forty in number--were suddenly rigged out, and she a.s.sumed the appearance of a gigantic centipede hurrying over the surface of the sea, her long oars rising and falling swiftly, with a gun-like flash of sunlight off their wet blades, as they churned the water into snow-white foam on each side of her.
But a very few minutes sufficed to prove the correctness of my judgment as to their uselessness under the present circ.u.mstances, a very distinct confusion of movement among the shining blades revealing--what I had foreseen--that her canvas was driving her too fast through the water for her oarsmen to keep pace with her. The confusion rapidly became more p.r.o.nounced, until every individual oar-blade was rising and falling independently of all the others, while frequent pauses of movement, accompanied by a great splashing of water, revealed that the unhappy oarsmen were busily engaged in the unseamanlike operation of "catching crabs". As a matter of fact, her sweeps were proving to be a hindrance rather than a help to her, and we began to overhaul her so fast that we were soon within point-blank range of her. Tom Hardy had a.s.sumed charge of our Long Tom, and he had gradually worked himself up into such an uncontrollable condition of fidgety impatience, running his eye along the sights and then glancing round at me, that it seemed cruel to keep him thus any longer on the tenter-hooks of suspense, and I, rather reluctantly, nodded permission to him to fire. The next instant the gun spoke out, the shock of its discharge jarring the schooner to her keel, and the shot flew high over the mast-heads of the galley and a little wide of her.
"I expected as much, Tom," remarked I reprovingly. "You are far too much excited. Take it coolly, man; take it coolly. That galley must be effectually disabled, or she will give us the slip to windward and bring two or three more like herself after us, which I have no desire at all to see. And I have no desire to take her, for she would be worse than useless to us, she would be a really dangerous possession. Ah! I expected as much; down comes her canvas; she is going to try to dodge us and work out to windward in the wind"s eye! Never mind the gun just now; in with the stunsails, for your lives, or she will be too quick for us!"
What I feared and expected had come to pa.s.s. Our heavy shot had fairly frightened the people aboard the galley; they realised at last that a trick had been played upon them, and her commander"s great anxiety now evidently was to get as quickly as possible out of the trap that he had been decoyed into. And, with this object, he had suddenly lowered his sails and put his helm hard over, with the object of returning by the way that he had come. But we were to windward of the galley, and, our stunsails coming in with a run, we were able to haul close upon a wind almost as quickly as the galley, when--the latter now depending upon her oars alone--the schooner proved to be considerably the faster of the two, thus effectually cutting off our antagonist"s escape in that direction.
"Now, back to your gun, and load as quickly as you like!" exclaimed I; for I knew that a very critical moment was at hand for us; a moment that would decide whether it was the galley or ourselves that was to be victorious. And presently my antic.i.p.ation became realised; the Spaniard, finding his escape cut off, again putting over his helm until the vessel swerved round with her long, keen bows pointing straight at us. Her commander intended to run us aboard--if he could--and, should he succeed, the schooner would either be sent to the bottom by the violence of the shock, or we should fall into the hands of the Spaniards, to endure, in all probability, a fate even more horrible than that from which h.o.a.rd had escaped.
Straight as an arrow for us came the galley, her two masts keeping steadily in one as her helmsman relentlessly followed the schooner"s movement through the water, while the long oar-blades now rose and fell quickly in perfect time, urging the long, snake-like hull toward us at a speed of fully seven knots. Tom Hardy mopped the perspiration of excitement from his brow with a bright red handkerchief as he muttered anathemas upon his previous ill-luck, but I saw that he had pulled himself together, for his hand was as steady as yours is at this moment as he gently waved it in direction of those who were training the gun.
"Now, Tom," said I, when he had reported all ready, "this shot must go home, mind; there must be no missing this time! So take it coolly; let her approach us to within a hundred fathoms before you think of firing-- I will give you the word--and then let her have it as soon as you are certain of your aim."
"Ay, ay, sir," answered Tom. "I"ll have her this time or you may call me a sojer. Give the word, sir, whenever you like."