A brief, earnest consultation was then held; when, knowing the uselessness of trying to signalize the frigate, they first thought to weigh anchor and try to escape to her protection; but a little reflection told them the enemy would be down upon them before this could be effected, and they would be taken, unprepared for defence. The only other alternative left them was, therefore, quickly adopted; and, in pursuance, the second mate and two seamen were lowered in the life-boat, with orders to keep the ship between themselves and the schooner till they got into the screening fog, and then make their way, with all speed, to the frigate, to invoke her aid and protection; while all the rest should arm themselves with the muskets, swords, and pistols on board, and, if possible, hold the enemy at bay till succor arrived. And scarcely had these hasty preparations been made, before the piratical schooner, which had made a wide tack outward to catch the wind, came swiftly sweeping round to their side, like a towering falcon on his prey. But, by some miscalculation of her helmsman, she went twenty yards wide of them—not, however, without betraying the full extent of her bloody purposes; for as, under the impulse of a speed she found herself unable instantly to check, she swept by on the long, rolling billows, a score or two of desperate ruffians, headed by their burly and still more fierce-looking captain, stood on her deck, armed to the teeth, and holding their hooks and hawsers, ready to grapple and board their intended prey. But, still forbearing to unmask their batteries or fire a gun, lest they should thus bring down the frigate upon them, her grim and silent crew sprang to their posts, to tack ship and come round again, with the narrowest sweep, to repair their former mischance. And, with surprising quickness, their well-worked craft was again, and this time with no uncertain guidance, shooting alongside of the devoted merchantman. Still the crew of the latter quailed not; but, well knowing there was no longer any hope of escaping a struggle in which death or victory were the only alternatives, stood, with knitted brows and fire-arms cocked and levelled, silently awaiting the onset. It came. With the shock of the partial collision as the assailing craft raked along the sides of their ship, and the sudden jerk as she was brought up by the quickly-thrown grapples, the pirate captain, with a fierce shout of defiance, cleared, at a single bound, the intervening rails, and landed, with brandished sword, upon their fore-deck. A dozen more, with a wild yell, were in the act of following, when they were met by a full volley from the guns of the defenders, poured into their very faces. There was a pause,—a lurch,—a crack of breaking fixtures; and the next moment the schooner, torn away from her fastenings by the force of a monstrous upheaving wave, and thrown around at right angles to the unharmed prey so nearly within her clutches, was seen rolling and reeling on the top of a billow, fifty yards distant. At that instant, twenty jets of blinding flame fiercely burst from the edge of the fog-cloud, almost within pistol-shot to the windward, and, with the startling flash, rent sky and ocean leaped as with the concussion of a closely-breaking volley of linked thunder-peals. There was another and still more awful pause; when, through the cloud of sulphurous smoke that was rolling over them, the astounded defenders heard the gurgling rush, as of waters breaking into newly opened chasms, in the direction of the enemy; and they comprehended all. The frigate, unperceived by the eager pirates, had dropped down, rounded to, and sent a whole broadside directly into the uprolled hull of the devoted craft, which had been reduced to a sinking wreck by that one tremendously heavy discharge of terrible missiles. Within two minutes the lifting smoke disclosed her, reeling and lurching for the final plunge. Within one more, she rose upright, like some mortally-smitten giant, quivered an instant, and, with all her grim and hideously-screeching crew, went down, stern foremost, amid the parting waves of the boiling deep.
These startling scenes had transpired so rapidly that the amazed crew of the merchantman had taken no thought of the pirate captain whom they had seen leaping on their deck; but they now turned to look for him, and, whether dead or alive, to take charge of him, to crown the fortunate result of this fearful encounter. There he stood at bay, with back turned to the foremast, facing his virtual captors, with a brandished sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, as if daring them to approach or fire on him. But they were spared the necessity of attempting either. A boat's crew of armed men from the frigate were already mounting the deck, to claim whoever of the pirates they found alive, as their trophies. The formidable desperado was pointed out to them; when, firing a volley over his head, to confuse without killing him, they rushed forward in the smoke, disarmed, bound, and dragged him along, to pass him down to their boat. As he was being urged across the deck, his eyes met those of Elwood. The recognition was mutual. It was Gaut Gurley!
It was morning, and the bright sun was looking down upon an ocean as calm and peaceful as if its passive bosom had never been disturbed by the ensanguined tumults of warring men, or the commotions of battling elements.
A youthful couple were standing by the rail, on the deck of the still anchored merchantman, and glancing up admiringly at the towering masts of the ship-of-war, which had also anchored for the night on the very spot from which she had dealt such destruction to the pirates, whose awful fate and the connected circumstances had been with them the topic of conversation.
"This has been such a fearful ordeal to you, dear Fluella," said the young man, smilingly, "that I shall probably never be able again to induce you to leave home to cross the ocean, either for health or pleasure, shall I?"
"For pleasure, no, my dear husband," affectionately responded the other; "no, with my happy New England home, never, for pleasure, Claud."
"But this was for health," rejoined Elwood. "I have never told you how much I was concerned about you last summer, or that your physician warned me, as cold weather approached, he could not answer for your life through another winter at the North. It was this only that led me to urge you to accompany me to Cuba, to remain there till I came back for you in the spring, as I have now done. And, to say nothing of the gains which my two trips will add to the estate of which I am heir in expectation,—or rather, as my good uncle will have it, in possession with him,—to say nothing of this, I shall always be thankful for your coming, for it has so evidently restored you, I had almost said, to more of health and beauty than I have seen you exhibiting for the whole two and a half happy years of our married life."
"Thank you, Claud, for the beautiful part of it," said the happy wife, snapping her handkerchief in his face, with an air of mock resentment; "but I am thinking of home. When shall we reach there?"
"Well, let us calculate," replied the husband, beginning to catch the affectionate animation of the other: "this is the 22d of April; and I think I can promise you the enjoyment of a May-day in New England."
"I hold you to that, sir," playfully rejoined the wife, "for I wish to be preparing for our summer residence at your cottage on my native lakes. My illness deprived me of that pleasure last summer, you know, husband mine."