Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
"That depends upon you, Captain Mazagan. But you are so very polite while you act as a pirate, that I think it is proper for me to say, with your permission, that my crew can fire thirty-six balls without stopping to load again.
"It would not have ended in just the way you have pictured it, Captain Scott," added Louis with a smile. "I think enough of the ship's company would have stood by me to enable me to make an effectual resistance, and Mazagan might have got a bullet through his left breast instead of through his right shoulder."
"But I gave him a polite invitation to take possession of my cabin without the use of force, and he declined to accept it," argued Captain Mazagan, somewhat mollified in his tone and manner. "Which he had a perfect right to do.
Belgrave and the Woolridges would have insisted upon returning to New York, and abandoning the voyage from which so much of pleasure and instruction was expected. Captain Ringgold and Louis had considered the situation, and fully realized the intention of Captain Mazagan to follow the steamer and her little consort.
"Every fellow would have stood by you, my dear fellow, as long as you stood yourself," replied the captain. "If Mazagan had disabled the Maud, he could have retired out of reach of our rifle balls, and knocked a hole through the vessel with his guns, and sunk her. Then he would have had nothing to do but to pick up his millionaire, and ransom him with double the sum he demanded in Cairo."
"Then the fellow lied!" exclaimed the captain of the Blanche. "He told Louis if he would persuade his trustee to give him half the full amount of the reward, he would collect the other half of His Highness, as promised in case of failure." "That Mazagan is a villain and a scoundrel I have no doubt," said Captain Sharp. "Since the affair at Zante, the Pacha has had no hand in the matter."
"Do you see anything of Mazagan?" "I have been looking for him, but I can't make him out," replied Louis. By this time one of the boats was in the water, and the men were crowding into her without any order or method in their movements. No one appeared to be in command, and every one was acting for himself.
"That is an odd question, Louis," answered Scott, laughing heartily, perhaps as much to manifest his coolness as to treat the question lightly. "Excuse me, Louis, but you make me smile. Do I expect Mazagan to resort to violence? For what did he visit Pournea Bay? Did he resort to violence when he caught you in that shop in the Muski?
There was nothing for it but to push forward and trust to luck: in time we cut into innumerable little paths, which snaked side by side in the same direction across the plain, pointing towards the coast, and these we surmised to be the trail to Mazagan, which proved to be correct. But at that moment, though we were anything but certain, it had become absolutely necessary to halt for the night.
At the time of his accession, Portugal had lost much of her old military prestige; the Moors had proved too strong for her diminished armies; the four strongholds of Arzilla, Alcazar-Sequer, Saphin, and Azamor, had been wrested from her; and Mazagan, Ceuta, and Tangier alone remained to her of all her African possessions.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking