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But during that minute or so of frightful suspense, which the stranger's crew had spent in rushing madly and aimlessly about the decks, execrating us in voluble Spanish, an opportunity had been afforded us to ascertain that the brigantine was named the San Antonio, and that she was beyond all question a slaver, with a cargo on board.
I paused for an instant and reflected; and my thoughts took somewhat this shape: "If Mendouca is returning and he undoubtedly is it is because through some unfortunate combination of circumstances my absence has already been discovered, and he has at once jumped to the correct conclusion that I have somehow contrived to escape from the brigantine to the ship.
Whereupon, like a sensible fellow, he ran the Spanish flag up to his gaff, allowed it to flutter there for a moment, and then hauled it down again in token of his surrender. Our chance encounter with the brigantine thus ended satisfactorily enough, so far as we were concerned.
While Maxwell stole forward to get his wire, I crept up on the poop again, and carefully avoiding the skylight, so that my figure might not be revealed by the coloured rays that streamed from it, found that the boat with Jose and his companions, and the last of the plunder, was just going alongside the brigantine.
They were rushing through an opening in the palisade, when he, with a few soldiers, met them with such vigor and resolution, that they were held in check long enough for the rest to snatch their arms. Montmagny, who was on the river in his brigantine, hastened on shore, and the soldiers, encouraged by his arrival, fought with great determination.
He glared at the strange launch, almost on a level with himself, owing to the listing over of the brigantine and the burning down of her bulwarks; and he turned white with fear and passion at sight of Houten, big, imperturbable, motionless, gazing up at him with beady eyes glittering from out of his placid, fat face.
At this instant, Captain Griggs woke to the fact that his helm was still lashed, and bestowing a hearty kick on his prostrate quartermaster stuck fast to the pitchy seams of the deck, took the wheel himself, and easing off before the wind to bring the vessels broadside to broadside, commanded that the guns be shooed to the muzzle, an order that was barely executed before the brigantine came within close range.
The villains carried off my ship, a brigantine of 150 tons a pretty creature she was and put me, a man, and a boy, into a little bad pink, in which, with much ado, we at last made Falmouth; though I believe the Spaniards did not imagine she could possibly live a day at sea.
Then the fore-topmast crosstrees reports a sail on the weather quarter, the Richard is brought around on the wind, and away we go after a brigantine, "flying like a snow laden with English bricks," as Midshipman Coram jokingly remarks. A chase is not such a novelty with us that we crane our necks to windward. At noon, when I relieved Mr.
For some days the time now hung somewhat heavily upon the hands of the little community. A solitary brigantine only was seen, and she so far to windward, that with the short supply of coal afforded by the not overscrupulous merchants of Port of Spain, it was not thought worth while to incur the expense and delay of a chase. The Sumter was now terribly in need of an excitement.
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