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As agile as monkeys, the mob of pirates poured over the bulwark, slashing through the hammock nettings, and swept forward in a compact mass, driving Captain Wellsby's seamen before them and penning them in the forecastle. Having cleared the waist of the ship, they loitered there until a few of them discovered the galley and pantry.
The new hammocks are issued and slung, and the bedding being lashed up in them, they are stowed in the nettings, with their numbers ranged in a straight line, in regular order fore and aft.
Come along, lads, follow me, and hurroo for ould Oireland!" The two schooners being fast together, every man Jack of us sprang after our leader, only to be confronted by the boarding nettings triced up on board our antagonist, however; and as we sprang on the bulwarks and commenced hacking away at the obstruction they opened a hot and most destructive fire upon us with their muskets and pistols.
The officers and ships' companies crowded into the hammock nettings and rigging to see me pass, and never have I heard such shouts of laughter as they raised as I pulled by. Neither to the one side nor to the other could I turn; for if I did, as surely one of the beasts would instantly swim up, with open mouth, and make a grab at my oar to keep me going straight ahead.
I had jumped from the nettings, where I was perched, to assist in unbolting one of the carronade slides, when I slipped and capsized against a peg sticking out of one of the scuppers. I took it for something else, and d d the ring bolt incontinently. Caboose, the cook, was passing with his mate, a Jamaica negro of the name of John Crow, at the time.
And I apologised heartily to Potter for poking fun at his wire nettings. Though it was so hot, the air was delicious. It smelt of new-mown grass and lilies, with a sharp little spicy tang of the thick Virginia creepers, which made a shadowy green room of the "piazza."
The others made their attack gallantly; but the enemy were fully prepared: every vessel was defended by long poles, headed with iron spikes, projecting from their sides: strong nettings were braced up to their lower yards; they were moored by the bottom to the shore, they were strongly manned with soldiers, and protected by land batteries, and the shore was lined with troops.
It was exciting work, for spears were flying in showers, stink-pots were hurled over the nettings, and the yelling and shouting were deafening. Our men were sticking to their pikes, for they had been ordered to keep their pistols in reserve in case the pirates obtained a footing on deck.
With double-charged cannon, with loaded muskets ready at hand, and with pikes and cutlasses laid out on deck, one for each man, where we could snatch them up as soon as we had spent our first fire, we grinned from behind the nettings at our erstwhile shipmates.
Inspector Nettings, Hewitt was told, was in charge of the case, and as the inspector was an acquaintance of his, and was then in the rooms upstairs, Hewitt went up to see him. Nettings was pleased to see Hewitt, and invited him to look around the rooms. "Perhaps you can spot something we have overlooked," he said. "Though it's not a case there can be much doubt about."
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