"We shall soon be broadside on with her," he said. "The O'Donnells will be on the poop. You had best get for'ard, Robert. If we board from abaft the foremast 'twill place you strategically to seize upon them. Where is Peter?"
The Dutchman leaned through the smoke-whorls.
"We better go aboardt der Spaniard, ja, Murray?" he answered calmly.
My great-uncle chuckled as he dusted snuff into his nostrils.
"We had, friend Peter. And you and Robert had best carry arms. I fear the Spaniards will not seek to differentiate betwixt you and my wicked self."
"Ja," assented Peter. "We go."
Amidships we encountered Saunders and a horde of men pouring up from the gun-deck to augment the boarding-parties. Peter and I tarried to select weapons from a rack by the main mast. He took a boarding-pike, and I contented myself with a cutlass.
Murray, having inspected the grapplings and ascertained that hooks had been rigged from our yard-arms to clutch the Spaniard's rigging, rejoined us. He was dressed with his usual exquisite taste in watered gray silk, with white silk stockings and gray shoes with jeweled buckles. He wore no hat, and his white hair was clubbed and cued. The only weapon he carried was a dress-sword, which he held unsheathed.
"An end to our immediate worries soon, Robert," he announced cheerfully. "The action has gone perfectly. I would not have varied a move so far. We have not lost a dozen men."
A final blast from our guns tore the smoke-clouds to shreds, and a vagrant wind-puff snatched them aside. 'Twas like the drawing of the curtain at a play. The treasure-ship lurched helplessly not twenty fathoms distant, her rigging in tatters, her spars split and wounded, her fo'csle and foredeck one red litter, her bulwarks splintered, gunports blown in, guns dismounted. A handful of men were laboring to cut loose the wreck of the fore-mast, and a few other brave fellows were still fighting a couple of guns which raked us as the bowsprit of the James nudged over her rail.