“Thus we went on, the sea getting more regular every hour, so that we could send up the top-gallant masts, get the yards across, shake a reef or two out, and put the ‘Scourge’ in order. The schooner needed no encouragement from us, but cracked on more sail until her long main-mast reeled and bent over, as she came up on the breaking ridge of a wave, like a whip-stalk. By noon the clouds had gone, and left us a clear sky, with the gale going down into a full top-gallant breeze, sending the corvette along good eleven knots. We got an observation for latitude, and five hours later we determined the longitude and our position to be a few leagues to leeward of the Sarrana Keys, with that bird of a schooner before us heading for the Musquito coast.
“If we had caught a cataract of water as it rolled over our bows in the morning, the schooner was taking her bath in the afternoon, for occasionally, for five minutes at a time, there was nothing seen of her deck, and only the masts and broad white canvas above, like jury-sticks out of a raft. But when she did slide up with her low, long hull shooting clean out of water, till nearly half her keel, with the copper sheathing flashing in the sun, was visible, she looked like a dolphin making a spring after a shoal of flying-fish. And then on her narrow deck we could see a few fellows lashed about the fore-mast, and a couple more abaft steering her like a thread through a needle.
“We began to gain upon her now, and whenever she kept a little away before the wind the gap between us closed more rapidly; for the ship could evidently outcarry the schooner, and, had the breeze freshened and the sea kept up, we could have run her under if her masts didn’t go out of her, as we hoped and expected every minute they would. Gradually, however, she watched her chance and hauled up till she brought the wind barely abeam, and steered true for the Musketeers––a bad cluster of low keys nearly surrounded by as terrible ledges and reefs as any to be found in the Caribbean Sea.
“Her captain was evidently bent upon playing a desperate game, but, if he thought he would not find another ready to lay down the same stake, he was greatly mistaken! It was about sunset when we made the keys, and there we went––the schooner leading us about a mile––at a rate which would have made both vessels leap clear over 218 the first ledge they struck, and perhaps have thrown summersaults of us into the bargain. I asked the captain, who had never left my side on the poop, if we should keep on.
“‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, ‘so long as we have a gun and a plank to float it!’
“And, by Saint Paul! we kept on. And there was not a soul on board the ‘Scourge,’ from the drummer-boy up, who did not agree with the captain. How those villains on board the pirate relished this decision we could only surmise; but, at all risks, he held his course with a nerve that might have made the devil himself shudder.
“By this time the sun was well down, and a brilliant moon was riding high in the heavens; but, as bright as it was, the fellow who commanded that schooner required an eye as keen as an albatross and a hand as steady as an iron bar to guide his craft in the direction he was going––too late for either of us to think of hauling off.
“He must, too, have had a thorough knowledge of the reefs and keys, and trusted, perhaps, if he got clear himself, that the corvette, drawing eighteen feet water and ignorant of the channel, might touch something which would throw the game in his hands. Our men had the ropes stretched along the decks and the battery clear on both sides, so as to be ready to wear, or tack, or fire, as our pilot ahead might require.
“The reefs were to leeward of the string of low keys, which made the water comparatively smooth, though the wind still swept strongly over us and sang through the rigging; and it was here the ‘Centipede’ entered, going like wild pigeons the pair of us. The outer reef had a fair, deep passage, and so had the next; but the inner one presented but one narrow gateway, scarcely wide enough for a ship to scrape through, with the whole reef one uninterrupted fringe of black pointed rocks and roaring white breakers, which toppled over, and boiled and eddied like a thousand whirlpools into the smoother water inshore.
“As the ‘Centipede’s’ stern gave a sharp pitching jerk when she entered this boiling gorge, we saw, in the moonlight, her head-yards laid square, the fore and aft sails flowing in the sheets as she fell off with wide wings and the wind on her quarter, and flew down inside the reef.