THE PIRATE’S PREY.
“Well, señores, the next minute we let go the painter and floated astern past the ship’s counter, and a few strokes of the oar-blades sent us dancing away to leeward, where the schooner was lying with 97 her main-sail up, and the jib-sheet hauled well to windward. We made no unnecessary noise in getting alongside, and it took no great time to get the boat clear, a tackle hooked on, and to swing her on board over the long gun. Then we drew aft the sheets, set the fore-sail, and the ‘Centipede’ was once more reeling off the knots on her course.”
“But the ship, my son?”
“Why, my padre, I was so busy attending to the schooner, and afterward going below to break the sad news to my lovely dark-eyed passenger of the loss of her mother, that I had no time to devote to the ship. Pedillo, however, told me that he heard a good deal of frantic shrieking, and prayers, and cursing, with, for a little while, the renewed clank of the chain-pumps, but after that we had got too far to windward to hear more. About midnight, though, Pedillo and some of the watch thought they saw a white shower of foam like a breaking wave, and a great commotion in the water, but that was all. So, you see, what really became of that old craft we do not positively know; though for a long time afterward I read the marine lists very attentively, yet I never saw any accounts of her arrival at her destination.
“Perhaps,” added Captain Brand, with a peculiar smile, as he lit a fresh cigar, “her arrival may have escaped my notice, as I hope it may, though I think not.”
Don Ignaçio intimated, by waving his fore finger to and fro, that such a hope had no possible foundation in fact; and he stated, too, that he knew the underwriters had paid the full insurance on the missing ship.
“Ah! well, that seems to settle the matter, truly,” murmured the captain, as if he had long entertained painful doubts on the subject, and now his mind was finally relieved.
“But, hico mio! Son of mine! La Señorita––hiccough––with the almond-shaped eyes––Santissima!––hic––how did she bear the––death of her––hic––mother?”