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She determined within her own mind that voluntarily she would not. We shall leave this young girl, slowly wandering along the beach of her islet, musing on matters like these, while we return to the vessels and the mariners. A good breeze had come in over the reef from the Gulf, throwing the sloop-of-war dead to leeward of the brigantine's anchorage.
All the brigantine's canvas was loose, her mainsail was set, and the windlass was just beginning to clink as I stepped upon her deck: her master, a dapper little half-caste of forty or so, in a blue flannel suit, with lively eyes, his round face the colour of lemon-peel, and with a thin little black moustache drooping on each side of his thick, dark lips, came forward smirking.
"Got it, hey?" he remarked, nodding with approval as Blunt's boat hauled the great anchor dripping between his boat and Rolfe's, where the mate's crew made it fast, swinging on both gunwales by a baulk of timber laid across, ready to be either let go again, or taken under the brigantine's bows and hove up with the windlass.
Holding the cat-boat on for a time, he brought her about handsomely a little way beyond the brigantine's course, and hung in the eye of the wind, the leach flapping and tightening with reports like rifle-shots, and the water sloshing about his calves bailing-dish now altogether out of mind while he watched the oncoming vessel, his eyes glistening with anticipation.
It was even as Lindsay had said; we had shot away the brigantine's mainboom, and thus rendered her big, powerful mainsail useless; so that, despite the lee helm that they were giving her, she was gradually falling off, until within a minute or two she was nearly dead before the wind.
Ten minutes later the boat was lowered and at the lee gangway; and in another ten minutes we were aboard the prize. We were received at the brigantine's gangway by a most ruffianly-looking individual, with his left arm in a sling, and his otherwise bare head bound up in bandages through which the blood was even then oozing.
I had long ago prepared a red swallow-tailed burgee, such as the pirate had dared me to exhibit, and I immediately gave orders to hoist it at our fore royal masthead. The flag had scarcely reached the truck when I saw a black flag flutter out over the other brigantine's rail and go soaring aloft to her gaff-end. Morillo had evidently recognised my challenge, and was prompt to answer it.
What if the boat should be led away too far in the ardour of the chase, and of course taking for granted that as soon as the brigantine's contumacy was discovered, the Alabama herself would at once be after her?
As the words left my lips there was a ringing report and a smart concussion; and, springing upon the weather rail, I was just in time to see the shot neatly strike the water immediately under the brigantine's figure-head, the spray from it leaping up and leaving a dark stain upon the foot of her foretopmast staysail.
Our attack being made upon the two extremities of the brigantine's deck, we soon had her crew hemmed in between the skipper's and my own party, and for the next ten minutes there was as pretty a fight as one need wish to witness, the Frenchmen rallying gallantly to the call of their captain.
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