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He next ordered a dozen small boys aloft, to reef and set her upper square-sail. When I urged that it was as good as asking them to commit suicide, he cursed me openly. 'Drown the poor pups, will I? I thought damn you all! you laid yourselves out to breed seamen! You say you do, at prize-givings! He ran forward again to get the hawsers buoyed before slipping them.
The man at the helm, who was unluckily the worst steersman of the party, became alarmed, and, instead of putting her before the wind, luffed her up into it. The wind was so high that it forced the brace of the square-sail out of the hand of the man who was attending it, and instantly upset the canoe, which would have been turned bottom upward but for the resistance made by the awning.
We had not run on for ten minutes when her head came slowly round towards us, her square-topsails were hoisted up, her foresail was rigged out, a square-sail was set, and after us she came like a greyhound in chase of a hare. "What chance have we, do you think, of getting away from her, Mr Stone?" said Jerry, pointing to the big schooner, which was coming up hand over hand after us.
"Yes, sir, it looked so nasty that I got the square-sail off her and the topsail on deck before it struck us, and as we ran the foresail down just as it came we were all right, and only just got the water on deck. It was as well, though, that we were lying becalmed. As it was, she jumped away directly she felt it.
It is true their faces were all blacked to disguise them, but one could get enough glimpses of the skin to judge of the true colour. There was no negro among them. The chap who cut away the square-sail halyards, I felt certain was no Spaniard. The sail was no sooner down, than he ran his knife along the head, below the bolt-rope, as if to cut away the cloth with the least trouble to himself.
The fierce edge of the gale by this time had blown off, and I had already bent a square-sail on the boom in place of the mainsail, which was torn to rags. I hauled in the trailing ropes, hoisted this awkward sail reefed, the forestaysail being already set, and under this sail brought her at once on the wind heading for the land, which appeared as an island in the sea.
She was steering about west-north-west, and appeared to have every stitch of canvas packed upon her that her crew could spread, including square-sail, topgallant, topmast, and lower studding-sails, which was not at all surprising, considering that the wind was light and dead fair for her. It was apparent enough to me, however, that the Spaniards did not like the look of her.
In five minutes the captain gave the order to the helmsman, and the craft was then laid on her new course. "The wind is northing a bit," the skipper said as, after giving the helmsman instructions, he came up to Frank. "It has shifted two points round in the last half hour, and you see we have got the boom off a bit. If it goes round a point more we will get the square-sail ready for hoisting.
The more strenuously, however, we endeavoured to approach the vessel, the more she bore away; and, being a long way to the eastward of us, and going before the wind with her square-sail set, it was doubtful whether we should fetch her.
I knew the old Boca's best point; it was with the wind a point abaft the beam; we put her to that, got the great square-sail on her, shook out all reefs, and gave all she had to the wind. The wake roared away from her like a white torrent that flies from the foot of a foaming cataract. She had the pirate's instincts, and being put to her trumps, was nimble. God! how she did swing through it!
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