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"I should be hung at the yard-arm instantly! I should be lynched. Dunwody would come in the lead, crashing over the tables. I fear Dunwody, even bearing a rope, as we used to say in Virgil, was it?" "Admirable! Now, since that is true, suppose you and I make some sort of terms! I'm tired of being jailed, even in a traveling jail. I told you fairly I should try to escape; and so I shall."
At the sight of the King's men the pirates flung themselves headlong aboard their schooners, and endeavoured to make off, but they were soon captured and brought back, to be afterwards tried and hanged at the yard-arm. When the man-o'-war's men boarded us, I ran down the companion stairs in search of the captain, whom I found lying senseless at the foot of the ladder.
The steamboat would slide past very close alongside, and he saw a last chance of escape. Moving out to the very yard-arm he clutched the lee-brace, which rope led diagonally downwards to the vessel's depressed rail. He looked below a moment, bracing himself for the perilous attempt.
Just as the Edgar sighted the Cape, she encountered a heavy gale, the seas rising in mountain billows around her. There was on board a young lad in whom Berge had from the first taken great interest, and who had lately been brought to know Christ. As the gale was seen approaching, the order was given to close reef the topsails, and the lad, with others, flew aloft. He was on the lee yard-arm.
"Well, then, Captain Seccombe, I am a passenger on board this ship, and know neither her business here nor why she has behaved in a fashion that makes me blush for her flag which, by the way, I have every reason to abominate." "O, come now! You're trying it on. It's a yard-arm matter, and I don't blame you, to be sure. Cap'n sank the mails?" "There were none to sink, I believe."
I let them know that by my direction the ship had been seized; that she lay now in the road; and they might see by-and-by that their new captain had received the reward of his villainy, and that they would see him hanging at the yard-arm; that, as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say why I should not execute them as pirates taken in the fact, as by my commission they could not doubt but I had authority so to do.
There was one comfort. On the way to Bayonne a boat-load of men had been landed at Socoa on leave, amongst them the Basque pilot, who might otherwise have been helped to a short shrift, and the dog's death from a yard-arm.
Of course it was very soon quelled; and the ringleaders having been tried by a court-martial, two of them were condemned to be hanged at the yard-arm of their own ship, and were ordered for execution the following day but one. Our courts-martial are always arrayed in the most pompous manner, and certainly are calculated to strike the mind with awe even of a captain himself.
Not to disturb the watch below, the main-top men were ordered up forward to help the fore-top men of the watch; and I was of course aloft, ready to lie out on the lee yard-arm when Wiggins, who had the watch below, came up in the top, not liking that Herbert should be at work in such weather without he being there too. "`Tom, says to me, `I'll take the yard-arm.
"Now, Jose," exclaimed Mendouca, "that ends the matter; do you hear? I cannot spare Senor Dugdale, so if he is found with a knife between his ribs I shall hold you responsible for it, and I give you my solemn promise that I will run you up to the yard-arm and leave you there until it will not matter to you what becomes of your miserable carcase.
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