Magnus sprang up the rigging somewhat after the fashion of an antiquated monkey, but with an agility no one would have given him credit for.
“It is she!” he shouted, after he had had a look through the long glass in towards the iron-bound shores of the islands; “it is she! it is she! Ha! ha! ha!” and he positively danced and chuckled with delight.
“You’ll fight? you’ll fight?” he gasped. “Rather,” replied McBain; “but we’ll run first. She shall fire the first shot, and, Magnus, you shall fire the second.”
Half an hour afterwards, when our heroes came on deck to have their morning look around, they stared at each other in blank astonishment. The Arrandoon looked as if she had just come out of a tornado and had been dreadfully handled. The foretop-gallant mast was down, the jibboom inboard, the screw was hoisted up, the funnel itself had been unshipped and was lashed to the deck, and the flag was flying at half-mast, as if the vessel were in distress, or had death on board.
Now let me, with one touch of the fairy wand the storyteller wields, waft my readers on board the pirate herself. Fear not, for we will stay there but a brief space of time indeed. The tall and by no means unprepossessing form of the captain, armed cap-à-pie, is leaning against the rudder-wheel, one spoke of which he holds. His mate is by his side, glass in hand, examining the Arrandoon, now only a few miles off.
“Ha! ha!” says the latter; “it is the same big craft we tried to strand; and she’s had dirty weather, too—foretop-gallant mast and jibboom both gone. She is flying a signal of distress.”
“Distress? Eh? Ha! ha! ha?” laughed the pirate. “Isn’t it funny? She’ll have more of it; won’t she, matie mine?”
The mate laughed and commenced to sing—
“‘Won’t you walk into my parlour?’
Said the spider to the fly?”