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Then when Captain Swarth's eyes permitted he took an observation or two, and, after a short lecture to his crew on the danger of sleeping in tropic moonlight, shaped his course for Barbados Island, to take up the burden of his battle with fate where the blindness had forced him to lay it down; to scheme and to plan, to dare and to do, to war and to destroy, against the inevitable coming of the time when fate should prove the stronger when he would lose in a game where one must always win or die.
He told of the flight from the English war-brig, of the taking of the old bark in the fog and the sinking of the pirate craft, of the transfer of guns and treasure to the bark, and the interview at sea with the English brig, in which Captain Swarth had deceived the other, and of Captain Swarth's reckless confidence in himself, which had induced him to follow the brig in and careen in the same bay.
Todd said grace his account of the wealth spread out on Captain Swarth's cabin table after the taking of the passenger-ship was something to arouse interest in a less worldly man than Captain Bunce. Virgin gold in bars, ingots, bricks, and dust from the Morro Velho mines of Brazil was there, piled up on the table until the legs had given way and launched the glittering mass to the floor.
They took occasional deep-sea soundings with the brig shaking in the wind, but found no bottom, and at the end of fifteen days a longer heave to the ground-swell was evidence to Captain Swarth's mind that he was passing Cape St. Roque, and the soundings were discontinued. "No use bothering about St. Paul Rocks or the Rocas, Angel," said he.
Captain Swarth's seamanly eye noted certain appearances of the tackles that held her down, which told him that the work was done and she was being slacked upright. "Just in time," he muttered. They brought the bark to anchor near the beach, about a half-mile from the brig, furled the canvas, and ran out an anchor astern, with the cable over the taffrail.
The men at the wheel strained their necks this way and that, with tense waves of conflicting expressions flitting across their weary faces, and the men forward, aroused by the screams, stood about in anxious expectancy until they heard Swarth's roar: "Lay aft here, the watch!" They came, feeling their way along by rail and hatch.
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