It appeared as if they intended to pass me, and I hallooed, “Schooner, ahoy! Why don’t you send a boat on board?”
I must say, that when the idea struck me that she was a pirate vessel, my heart almost failed me.
Shortly afterwards the schooner rounded to and lowered a boat, which pulled to the vessel. The boat’s crew were all negroes.
One of them said, “Jump in, you white boy; next jump he take be into the shark’s mouth,” continued the man, grinning, as he addressed himself to the others in the boat.
I got into the boat, and they rowed on board the schooner. I did then think that I was done for; for what mercy could I expect, being a king’s officer, from pirates, which the words of the negro convinced me they were?
As soon as I was alongside of the schooner, they ordered me to go up the side, which I did, with my spy-glass in my hand. I leaped from the gunwale down on the deck, and found myself on board of an armed vessel, with a crew wholly composed of blacks.
I was rudely seized by two of them, who led me aft to where a negro stood apart from the rest. A more fierce, severe, determined-looking countenance, I never beheld. He was gigantic in stature and limbed like the Farnesian Hercules.
“Well, boy, who are you?” said he, “and how came you on board of that vessel?”
I told him in very few words.
“Then you belong to that frigate that chased us the day before yesterday?”