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At this moment the fort made a signal. "Up with the helm!" shouted Captain Ready. The schooner rounded to; the boat came flying over the water, and in a few moments was alongside. The soldiers and their commander stepped on board. The latter was a very young man, possessed of a true Spanish countenance grave and stern.
I say, sir, if you will let me lead, we will try and take our schooner, give them a broadside of bullets when we get close up, and then out steel and board her like men. Once over her side, there won't be many of them left on deck at the end of five minutes; and as soon as we have got her and the use of her guns, if we don't sink them other two pirates I have never been to sea."
The schooner was now directed towards the stranger, and before very long they saw that her course had been changed, and that she was now bearing down upon them. Zac stood at the helm saying nothing, but keeping his eyes fixed upon the frigate, which drew nearer and nearer, till finally she came near enough for her flag to be plainly seen.
We had an advantage the pirate who visited us did not suspect: we had surveyed the ground from our look-out, and knew that our own schooner, or one like her, was at the mouth of the harbour.
Yet, after watching the movements of the schooner for about half an hour, and noting how, time after time, when the little barkie seemed to be trembling on the very brink of destruction, she unfailingly came to in time to avoid being overwhelmed, I grew so inured to the experience that I found myself able to go below and make an excellent breakfast with perfect equanimity.
The light in the House on the Dunes vanished; soon flashed again and then vanished once more. Slowly the light in the schooner descended to its normal position. A moment later the green light appeared on the north side of the House on the Dunes, where it had been earlier, and shone there steadily. Was it a signal to the Marquis de Boisdhyver?
The sharks bit ravenously, and soon swarmed about the schooner in hundreds. Hardly a half minute passed that one of the four Chinamen that were fishing did not signal a catch, and Charlie and Jim were kept busy with spade and gaff. By noon the deck-tubs were full. The lines were hauled in, and the hands set the tubs in the sun to try out the oil.
And now for a time Yankee commerce was to have a respite, its relentless little enemy directing its attention exclusively towards maturing her voyage across the Atlantic. She had at this time but sixty days' water for her own crew, in addition to whom there were now the six prisoners taken from the schooner.
It was no friendly voe the hapless schooner had come into, but the dangerous sound, studded with stacks and holmes, which flow between Lunda and Boden. Guided by that treacherous beacon, the Norna sailed slowly on and crashed on a sunken rock not far from the cliffs of Trullyabister.
But I was not going to permit that if I could help it, and it soon became perfectly clear that we could, the schooner having the heels of the ship, although we were soon under the lee of the latter, with her sails partially becalming ours. At length, finding that we could outsail the Indiaman, I luffed close in under her lee and hailed, in the best Spanish that I could muster "Ho, the ship ahoy!
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