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There was a hearty laugh at this frank speech, in which the skipper joined until the tears rolled down his cheeks. "No, no, Flinn," said he. "You are the last man I should think of sending upon such a business. Besides, I shall want you to lead one of the boarding-parties, where I know you will be in your element.
Then the electron telescope revealed a stubby, rotund cargo-ship, about to land on Mekin. Bors swore. It would be days before this tub reached Mekin on solar-system drive. But it must not report that an armed vessel had inspected it in remoteness. "We haul alongside," said Bors angrily. "Boarding-parties ready in the space-boats."
These were for use against boarding-parties. The vessel also contained numerous torpedo-tubes, always loaded. The destroyer registered about a thousand tons, and carried a crew of ninety-five men, who were reported as "a great happy family." The commanding officer said that there was surprisingly little homesickness among the men, many of whom had never before been so far from their native land.
Drake's old crew from the Golden Hind came forward to a man, among them Wright, 'that excellent mathematician and ingineer, and big Tom Moone, the lion of all boarding-parties, each in command of a ship. But Elizabeth was just then weaving the threads of an unusually intricate diplomatic pattern; so doubts and delays, orders and counter-orders vexed Drake to the last.
The Ark out-sailed her consorts and found herself alone with the galleons all round her. At that moment the wind dropped. The Spanish boarding-parties were at their posts. The tops were manned with musketeers, the grappling irons all prepared to fling into the Ark's rigging. In imagination the English admiral was their own. But each day's experience was to teach them a new lesson.
The skipper conned us alongside in such a masterly style that I do not believe the hulls of the two vessels actually touched at all at least, I was unconscious of any shock yet we were close enough for the two boarding-parties to spring with ease and certainty from our rigging into the Indiaman's channels; and the next moment, as they tumbled in over the ship's rail, our helm was eased up, and the vessels sheered apart, without having carried away so much as a rope-yarn.
The Broke that night was attacked by six German destroyers and, after a battle characterized by bulwark rasping against bulwark, by boarding-parties, hand-to-hand fighting, and all the elements that make the pages of Mayne Reid thrilling, defeated the six destroyers and proceeded to port with flags flying.
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