Ryan took a good long look at the barque, that was now about two points before our larboard beam, and some six miles distant, thrashing along in a style that did one’s heart good to see, and plunging into the heavy head-sea, against which she was beating until her foresail was dark with wet half-way up the weather-leech, and the spray was flying clean over her, and drifting away like smoke to leeward. Then he turned and looked at the brig on our opposite quarter.
“It’s risky,” he remarked to me through his set teeth, “but, by the powers, I’ll chance it! If we happen to be mistaken, why, I’ll make the skipper a handsome apology; if he’s a true man, that ought to satisfy him. Mr Bartlett”—to the boatswain—“cast off that drag and get it inboard over the port-rail with as little fuss as may be, so that if those fellows in the brig are watching us they may not know what we’re about; I want to keep that conthrivance a saycret as long as I can. Be as smart as you like about it. Mr Dugdale, I want twenty men to arm themselves forthwith, and then creep into the waist under the lee of the starboard bulwarks, taking care that they are not seen; pick me out the best men in the ship, if you please. Ah, here is Gowland, the very man I wanted to see! Mr Gowland, you see that brig—” and as I turned away to muster the men, and see that they were properly armed, he drew Gowland away to the other side of the deck, and began to communicate something to him in a very rapid, earnest manner.
By the time that the drag had been got inboard and stowed away, I had picked out the required men, and had contrived to get them by twos and threes under the starboard bulwarks without—so far as I knew—being seen by those on board the brig, watching the roll of the schooner and giving the word for the men to pass up through the scuttle and make a crouching run for it as the schooner rolled to port and hid her deck from the brig. That craft had by this time overhauled us, and was far enough ahead to permit of our reading her name—the Conquistador, of Havana—upon her stern; while our helmsman, taking Ryan’s hint, had steered so wildly, that he had sheered the schooner almost to within biscuit-toss of her neighbour. Meanwhile, now that the drag was no longer impeding us, we were gradually lessening the small space of water that separated us from the brig, and we could see that the schooner and her movements were exciting much curiosity and speculation, if not actual suspicion, in the minds of three men who stood right aft on her monkey-poop, intently watching us.
“Go for’ard and hail them,” said Ryan to me; “I want to get a little closer if I can without unduly exciting their suspicions. You can affect to be deaf if you like; perhaps that will give us a chance.”
I took the speaking-trumpet in my hand and, clambering leisurely into the fore-rigging, hailed in Spanish—
“Ho, the brig ahoy! what brig is that?”
“The Conquistador, of Havana,” was the reply. “What schooner is that?”
I turned to one of the men who was standing near me and asked, in the most natural manner in the world, “What did he say?”
“The Conkistee—something, of Hawaner, it sounded like to me, sir,” answered the man.
“What did you say?” I yelled at the brig, raising the trumpet again to my mouth.