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"Be it so," he said, lowering his head, and sitting down on a carronade, in order to avoid the gaze of those who surrounded him. While this was being done, the youthful Corrie was in the fore part of the schooner whispering eagerly to Alice and Poopy. "O Alice! I've seen him!" exclaimed the lad. "Seen who?" inquired Alice, raising her pretty little eyebrows just the smallest morsel.
The carronade was fired, and its momentary flash revealed that the ship was ashore in a little bay; the land abeam was low and some eighty yards off; but there was something black and rugged nearer the ship's stern. Their situation was awful.
We landed on the other side, and scrambled up a deuce of a cliff, and got to the tunnel there just in the nick of time. Young Carré here was fighting a dozen of them and a carronade single-handed." "Bon Gyu, Phil! We're well through with it. I oughtn't to have let you go alone, but you were gone before I knew, and we had all we could manage here.
The captain jumped down from the carronade, and hastened to the capstern, without finishing his sentence. "Shall we fire when we are ready, sir?" said I; for I perceived that he was not capable of giving correct orders. "Yes yes, to be sure," replied he, remaining where he was.
Between the Malay creese and the Castilian carronade the struggle was unequal, but it did not last the less long on that account, nor, obscure though it was, was it the less bloody. On both sides there was the same bravery, the same cruelty.
"Shorten sail to the taupsles and jib, get the colors ready on the halyards, and then send the men aft. . . ." Sail was no sooner shortened, and the crew ranged, than the captain came briskly on deck, saluted, jumped on a carronade, and stood erect. He was not the man to show the crew his forebodings. "My men, the schooner coming up on our weather quarter is a Portuguese pirate.
First allow an enemy to entrench, and then fight him! See the destruction brought upon the British at Bunker's Hill yet our troops there were only militia; raw, half-armed clodhoppers, and not a mortar, or carronade, not even a swivel only their ducking-guns! What, then, are we to expect from regulars, completely armed, with a choice train of artillery, and covered by a breastwork."
The ballast was then shifted, so as to bring her by the head, that she might thus draw less water by being on an even keel, all sharp vessels of her class requiring much deeper water aft than forward; the corvette's launch, with a I2 pound carronade fitted, was then manned and armed with thirty seamen and marines, under the command of the second lieutenant; the jolly boat and the two quarter boats, each with twelve men, followed in a string, under the third lieutenant, the master, and the senior midshipman; thirty picked hands were added to the schooner's crew, and I was desired to take the gig with six smart hands and Peter Mangrove, and to accompany the whole as pilot; but to pull out of danger so soon as the action commenced, so as to be ready to help any disabled boat, or to carry orders from the commanding officer.
Faith, I 'm not quite certain if we are not believed to be, at this very moment, concocting how to smuggle over the frontier a brass carronade and a royal livery, two pounds of gunpowder and a court periwig, to restore the Bourbons!" He burst into a fit of laughing as he concluded; and however little disposed to mirth at the moment, I could not refrain from joining in the emotion.
In the first burst of mingled despair and indignation, the seaman uttered a bass roar of defiance that might have done credit to the lungs of a small carronade, and at the same time shook his fist at the retiring schooner. The effect of this was as sudden as it was unexpected.
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