Like a tiger springing upon his prey, the boat flew through the water, was alongside the schooner, and Mr. Taylor was at the tiller, which he put hard down, to the utter astonishment of the steersman.
The boat’s crew were already in possession, the schooner, was luffed up in the wind, close under my quarter, a line was thrown to her, her sails came down by the run, and she was our prize without striking a blow and almost without a word being uttered!
The captain of the vessel had not fully recovered from his astonishment when he was brought on board my ship. From him I learned that she was the America, with one hundred and eleven bales of cotton, with which she had run out of Laredo a few days before. Casting a glance about my decks, now filled with men, he muttered: “Well you ’uns certainly tricked me that time! This must be that infernal Yankee bark they told me was off Aransas Pass!”
As I did not deem it advisable to remain longer in port after my capture, although it was undoubtedly made in American waters, I got my ship under weigh at once, and within thirty minutes we were standing out to sea with the schooner in tow, and the whole affair had passed off so quietly that I doubt if a vessel in port was aware that anything out of the common order had taken place.
I sent the America to Key West with a prize crew, and the following evening I was back at my old anchorage off Aransas with an abundance of fresh provisions and mess stores and enjoying the comfortable feeling that comes of outwitting an adversary.
CHAPTER VIII
CATCHING A TARTAR
But the good fortune that had thus far fallen to the lot of the Anderson was to take a turn, for we had not long returned to our station at Aransas when an affair occurred that was a decided damper upon the fun we had heretofore enjoyed in capturing prizes.
One morning while the watch was washing down the decks the lookout at the masthead gave the always welcome “Sail ho!” and upon closer inspection the vessel in sight proved to be a small sloop hugging the shore to the northward and evidently running down the coast on her way to the Rio Grande.
Of course we slipped our anchors at once and made sail in chase; but the wind was light and the sloop was of such light draft that, having a leading wind, she could safely keep almost in to the surf line, where we could not possibly get at her with the ship. In consequence, the sloop was rapidly approaching the entrance to Aransas Bay, where she would easily have escaped us, when I resorted to my former expedient and sent in an armed cutter, with a light gun, to head her off, knowing that if I could get her off shore I should eventually capture her.