The British frigate plodded along after the lighter vessel of Lafitte’s until the Equator was reached, and then she disappeared,—disgruntled at not being able to catch the saucy tartar. But the privateersman headed for the blue Bay of Bengal; there fell in with an English armed schooner with a numerous crew; and—although he only had two guns and twenty-six men aboard his own vessel—he tackled the sailors from the chilly isle like a terrier shaking a rat. There was a stiff little fight upon the shimmering waves of the Indian Ocean. When night descended the Britisher had struck and nineteen blood-stained ruffians from the privateer took possession of the battered hulk, singing a song which ran:
“For it’s fourteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum.”
Lafitte was now feeling better; his men had been fed; he had good plunder; and he possessed two staunch, little craft.
“Let’s bear away for India, my Hearties,” cried he, “and we’ll hit another Englishman and take her.”
What he had said soon came to pass, for, when off the hazy, low-lying coast of Bengal, a rakish East Indiaman came lolling by, armed with twenty-six twelve-pounders and manned with one hundred and fifty men. A bright boarding upon her stern-posts flaunted the truly Eastern name: the Pagoda.
The dull-witted Britishers had no suspicions of the weak, Puritan-looking, little two-’undred tonner of Lafitte’s, as she glided in close; luffed; and bobbed about, as a voice came:
“Sa-a-y! Want a pilot fer the Ganges?”
There was no reply for a while. Then a voice shrilled back,
“Come up on th’ port quarter. That’s just what we’ve been lookin’ for.”
The fat Pagoda ploughed listlessly onward, as the unsuspicious-looking pilot plodded up on the port side; in fact, most of the crew were dozing comfortably under awnings on the deck, when a shot rang out. Another and another followed, and, with a wild, ear-splitting whoop, the followers of Lafitte clambered across the rail; dirks in their mouths; pistols in their right hands, and cutlasses in their left.