Our people were by this time all at their stations, with sheets and halliards in their hands, ready to sway away at the first word of an order from me; and it was not so dark but that I was able to see, out of the corner of my eye, the nudges and gestures of delight which they interchanged as the great, stately Indiaman swept at length athwart our stern, dark and silent as a phantom.
“Up helm and wear her round,” I shouted, all necessity for further concealment being now at an end; “sheet home and hoist away for’ard—hold on aft with your peak and throat halliards until we are fairly round! Starboard braces round in! trim aft the starboard headsheets! Now hoist away your mainsail! Ah, they see us at last! There she bears away. Steady there with your lee helm, my man; do not let her come to just yet. Keep the chase upon your weather bow; she must not be allowed to get to leeward of us. Mr Lindsay, just pitch a shot athwart her hawse as a hint that we wish her to heave-to.”
The shot was fired, and another, and yet a third, but the stranger took no notice whatever, the object of her captain being apparently to bear away across our bows and so get before the wind, when, of course, the cloud of studding-sails that her rig allowed would afford her a very important advantage over the schooner. But I was not going to permit that if I could help it, and it soon became perfectly clear that we could, the schooner having the heels of the ship, although we were soon under the lee of the latter, with her sails partially becalming ours. At length, finding that we could outsail the Indiaman, I luffed close in under her lee and hailed, in the best Spanish that I could muster—
“Ho, the ship ahoy! Heave-to, and strike, sir, to His Britannic Majesty’s schooner Tern!”
The only reply to this was a rattling volley of musketry, evidently aimed at me as I stood on the weather rail, just abaft the main rigging, for I heard the bullets whistling all round my head.
“If you don’t heave-to, sir,” I exclaimed angrily, “by heaven, I will fire into and sink you!”
“Schooner ahoy! who are you?” now came a hail, in very indifferent English, from the ship; and in the dim starlight I could just make out the shape of a shadowy figure standing by the mizzen rigging.
“This schooner, sir, is His Britannic Majesty’s schooner Tern, as I have already had the honour to inform you. Do you intend to heave-to, sir, or will you compel me to fire into you?” I retorted, in English this time.
The figure vanished from the lee rail of the ship without making any reply to my question; and, annoyed at being treated in this curious fashion, I turned my face inward and shouted—
“Let her go off a little, Mr Lindsay,—just far enough to enable us to fire at his rigging,—and then see whether a broadside will bring the fellow to his senses.”