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Updated: May 11, 2025
The others were smaller pieces, carried for the purpose of defending the ship, should she be attacked by any of the picaroons, at that time the pest of the Caribbean Sea. When Owen again looked out, he saw that the enemy had considerably overhauled them since he went below.
In the moment before the picaroons actually started, I became the prey of the most intense anxiety. I knew we were to seaward of the cluster. But of our position relatively to the boats, and to the English ship they would make for, I was profoundly ignorant. The dinghy might be lying right in the way.
"What is your name?" the judge asked peremptorily. I said, "Juan John Kemp. I am of noble English family; I am well enough known. Ask the Señor O'Brien." On O'Brien's shaken face the smile hardened. "I heard that in Rio Medio the senor was called... was called..." He paused and appealed to the Lugareño. "What was he called the capataz the man who led the picaroons?"
"The day will come, Cuffe," he said, "when this young man will rejoice that his design on these picaroons, Frenchmen as they are, failed. Yes, from the bottom of his heart will he be glad." "My lord!" "I know you think this strange, Captain Cuffe; but no man sleeps the sounder for having burnt or blown up a hundred of his fellow-creatures like so many widows at a suttee.
We afterwards learned that letters sent after the ship had induced Captain Digges to get five additional hands in Calcutta, in order to be able to meet the picaroons that were then beginning to plunder American vessels, even on their own coast, under the pretence of their having violated certain regulations made by the two great belligerents of the day, in Europe.
Nine times in ten an English man-of-war succeeds when she makes a bold dash in boats against one of these picaroons. This lugger is so low in the water, too, that it will be like stepping from one cutter into another to get upon her decks; and then, sir, I suppose, you don't doubt what Englishmen will do?"
There is also a citizen or two from Furetiere's "Roman Bourgeois," there is Manon, aforesaid, and a company of picaroons, and an archbishop, and a lady styled Marianne, and a newly ennobled Count of mysterious wealth, and two grisettes, named Mimi and Musette, with their student-lovers.
For the next three or four days an unusual amount of vigilance was observable on board the men-o'-war, especially the frigates and gun-brigs, all of which kept well in the offing during the day, evidently on the lookout for prowling picaroons, and closing in again upon the convoy at night; but nothing was seen to keep alive suspicion; no ships of any description were encountered, save a couple of English frigates, each of which replied to the private signal and exchanged numbers with the Tremendous; and on the evening of the tenth day out the lofty, precipitous cliffs of the Azores were sighted and passed.
Finding out his mistake, he very soon made up his mind how to act; and Carlos, fearing that worse might befall me, had let him. But when the young girl had helped me to escape, Carlos, who understood fully the very great risks I ran in going to Havana in the ship that picked me up, had made use of O'Brien's own picaroons to save me from him. That was the story.
There was certainly some mystery about that town of his uncle's. One night I overheard him say to Castro: "Tell me, O my Tomas, would it be safe to take this caballero, my cousin, to Rio Medio?" Castro paused, and then murmured gruffly: "Señor, unless that Irishman is consulted beforehand, or the English lord would undertake to join with the picaroons, it is very assuredly not safe."
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