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They had a swift schooner, and five guns, one a Long Tom. All we had to fight them with was about fifteen men, and two brass carronades. Our skipper was Scotch, and he put up some fight, but it wasn't any use. There was only three of us left alive when the pirates came aboard. One of these died two days later, and another was washed overboard and drowned down in the Gulf.
Harry asked no questions, for the preparations told him what was about to be done, but passing below, he took charge of the duty there, while the captain superintended the part that was conducted on deck. In the course of the next hour eight twelve-pound carronades were sent up out of the hold, and mounted in as many of the ports which lined the bulwarks of the brigantine.
He knew his damnable business to the last link in the chain. We could see his deck black with men, and presently a boat dropped neatly and came bounding towards us. "Depress your carronades and discharge them," ordered a black-bearded young man in her, in excellent English, as they hooked on. "If one is withdrawn, we will blow you out of the water." The guns were discharged.
He didn't believe in anything except sugar stocks, horse-breeding, and that his grandfather had been a fool in not collecting a few Isaac Davises and John Youngs and brass carronades before he went to war with Kamehameha. So he collected curios in the pure collector's spirit; but my mother took it seriously. That was why she went in for bones.
"Steady, lads; steady!" cried I. "Don't fire until you can see what you are firing at, and take good aim before you pull the trigger!" But at that moment a whole host of canoes came dashing at us out of the fog and darkness, and a sharp, irregular volley of musketry rattled out fore and aft, in the midst of which bang! bang! rang out the carronades, almost simultaneously.
Shortly afterwards he was raised to post-rank, the Confiance being rated as a post-ship, with an armament of 22 carronades, 18-pounders, and a complement of 140 men and boys, in order that he might still remain her captain.
Each of the boats named possessed, as part of her fighting equipment, a gun mounted in the bows upon fore-and-aft slides, those belonging to the launch and yawl being 18-pounder carronades, while the first and second cutters each mounted a 12-pounder.
As they passed, at the distance of almost a mile, the American frigate discharged her main-deck battery, her spar-deck carronades not ranging so far. She thus reached a position not directly behind her antagonist, but well to the left, apparently about half a mile away.
And the great Scotch works on the river Carron will be hungering for beef, so far as Carron depended for beef upon carronades. Other arrears of evil will stretch after the extinction of war. I charge the fund with a perpetual allowance of half-pay to all the armies of earth; or indeed, whilst my hand is in, I charge it with full pay.
The ship was at this time refitting, and was what is usually called in the hands of the dockyard, and a sweet mess she was in. The quarter-deck carronades were run fore and aft; the slides unbolted from the side, the decks were covered with pitch fresh poured into the seams, and the caulkers were sitting on their boxes ready to renew their noisy labours as soon as the dinner-hour had expired.
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