“Vera weel, mon! vera weel!” “He’s the very man to do it!” said Stewart and Burns to Stingo, nodding backward at the commodore.
Another striking contrast to the hand-shaking, virtuous compact between Captain Brand and his friend, the pious padre Ricardo! I wonder if they are shaking hands now! Probably not.
“Gentlemen,” resumed Hardy, as he shook the ashes level in his wine-glass, as if he wished to preserve them to clean his teeth with after smoking, “I will not detain you much longer. Both vessels were making great speed, and long before sunset we had been keeping a bright look-out for the land. At last it was reported, trending 223 all around both bows, low and with a trembling mirage of pines and mangroves looming up, and a multitude of rocky keys dead ahead. We were steering directly for Las Mulatas Islands, a cluster then little known to any navigators save, perhaps, the buccaneers of the Gulf of Columbus, and perhaps, too, with the intention of running us just such another dance as our pilot had a night or two before. However, we were again all prepared to explore the unknown reefs; and, moreover, we got the starboard anchor off the bow, and bent the cables to that and the spare anchors amidships, so as to be all ready to moor ship in case our pilot required us to do so. And likewise the cutters were hanging clear from the davits––the same boats which had once before paid a complimentary visit to some of his friends––supposing he would like to entertain us in person.
“The sun went down again in a fiery blaze, and with its last ray there slowly rose to the main truck of the pirate a swallow-tailed black flag, with a white skull and cross-bones in the dark field. It fluttered for a moment out straight and clear, and then twisted itself around the thin mast, never more to be released by hands or halliards! That was the last glimpse those pirates ever caught of the murderous symbol they had so often fought and sailed under; and it was the last sun that a good many aching eyes ever looked upon who were sailing there in that half league of blue water. The moon, however, was riding bright and beaming, as clear as a bell, overhead, and that was all the light we cared for. The ‘Centipede,’ no doubt, would have preferred no moon at all, with a cloudy sky and a bit of a rain squall, to pursue the intricate navigation before her; but Heaven arranged the atmospheric scenery otherwise.
“‘By the deep eight!’ sang out the leadsman in the port chains. ‘The mark five!’ came from the opposite side. ‘Another cast, lads––quick!’ ‘And a half four!’ ‘Six fathoms, sir!’
“‘We must have stirred up the sand, Cleveland,’ said the captain; but even as he spoke the man in the starboard chains cried, ‘Three fathoms, sir!’ and while each instant we expected the ship to bring up all standing, and the masts to go by the board, the other leadsman sung out, joyfully, ‘No bottom with the line, sir!’
“Well, we were safely through that bed of coral, doing, no doubt, some trifling damage to the tender shoots and branches, as we flew through a narrow channel, with the waves breaking and moaning on the sandy shores over the keys, out into deep water again.
“Four or five miles beyond stood out a bluff rock, looking in the moonlight like a dozing lion with his paws crossed before him, ready to bound upon any who should approach his lair in the dense jungle of pines and tangled thickets which stood up like a bristling mane on the ridge behind.
“The ‘Centipede’ was now but a short half-mile ahead of us, her 224 deck alive with men, and manifestly ready for some desperate devilment. On her after rail, too, stood that man, tall and erect, his feet steadied by the cavil of the main boom, a spy-glass to his eye, and looking at the rocky lion now close aboard him, still with a cigar in his mouth; and we thought we could even see the thin puffs of smoke curling around his face. Suddenly, too, we saw the spy-glass whirled around his head, and at the instant the vessel fell dead off before the wind, the great main-sail flew over with a stunning crash and clatter of blocks and sheets as the wind caught it on the other quarter, making the long switch of a mast to spring like a bow, while the weather-shrouds slacked up for a moment in bights, and then came back taut with a twang you might have heard a mile! We could now see, as the space opened behind the rock, another frightful jagged ledge, on which the rollers were heaving in liquid masses high up a precipitous rock, and where the channel was not a cable’s length wide, leading into a foaming gloomy inlet, where not even the beams of the moon could penetrate! I heard the captain say, in his old decided way,
“‘Now for it, Cleveland! You take the battery, and I’ll look out for the ship!’