“The Con-quist-a-dor, of Havana. What schooner is that?”
I assumed the most utter look of bewilderment I could upon the spur of the moment, and then, waving my arm impatiently at our helmsman to sheer still closer alongside the brig, whose quarter was now fair abreast of our fore-rigging, repeated my question—
“What did you say?”
My interlocutor, who was evidently the skipper of the brig, stamped on the deck with vexation as he raised his hands to his mouth, and yelled at the top of his voice—
“The Con-quist-a-dor, of Havana! Do not sheer so close to me, if you please, señor. You will be foul of me if you do not look out!”
“That will do, Mr Dugdale,” shouted Ryan in English, to the evident astonishment and consternation of the brig’s people, “we can manage now. Stand by to jump aboard with me. I shall want you to act as interpreter, for the deuce a word do I understand of their confounded lingo.”
And as he spoke he waved his hand to the helmsman, while at the same moment Gowland, who stood close by, hauled down the Spanish and ran up the British ensign to our peak. There was a shout of dismay from those on board the brig, and a quick trampling of feet as her crew rushed to their stations and hurriedly threw the coiled-up braces, halliards, and sheets off the pins with some confused notion of doing something to evade us even at the last moment. But they were altogether too late; Somers, the quarter-master, who had seen what was afoot, and had gradually worked his way aft, sprang to the tiller, and jamming it over to port, sheered us very cleverly alongside the brig in the wake of her main-rigging, into which Ryan and I instantly leaped, followed by our twenty armed men. The surprise was so sudden and so complete that there was no time for resistance, even had the Spaniards been disposed to offer any, and in another moment we had reached the brig’s deck and she was in our possession, the schooner instantly sheering off again to a short distance in order that the two craft might not do any damage to each other.
Having taken so very decisive a step as to board and carry the brig, there was now of course nothing for us but to go through with the affair in the same high-handed fashion. I therefore demanded at once to see the ship’s papers; and after many indignant protests they were produced and flung down upon the cabin table for our inspection. These fully established the identity of the brig; and as an examination of her hold revealed that she was fitted with a slave-deck, large coppers for the preparation of food for the unfortunate blacks her captain hoped to secure, a stock of water, and farina ample enough to meet the wants of a large “cargo,” and an abundance of slave-irons, we were fully justified in taking possession of her, which we did forthwith. Half-an-hour sufficed for us to secure our capture and put a prize-crew on board under Gowland’s command, and we then parted company; the brig to stand on for an hour as she was going—so as not to needlessly alarm the barque—and then to haul up and shape a course for Sierra Leone, while we at once hauled our wind in pursuit of our new quarry, which bore by this time well upon our port-quarter—as we had hitherto been going—with her topsails just showing above the horizon.
We had no sooner trimmed sail in chase of the barque than we found, to our unspeakable gratification, that we were still far enough to windward to lay well up for her, she being at the commencement of the chase not more than a point and a half upon our weather bow, while, from the superiority of our rig, we were able to look quite that much higher than she did. The question now was whether, in the strong wind and heavy sea that we had to contend against, we could hold our own with a craft so much more powerful than ourselves.
We had of course taken the precaution to get down a couple of reefs in our topsail, and the same in the foresail, as well as to haul down the squaresail and get the bonnet off the jib before leaving the Conquistador, but it was not until we had hauled our wind and put the schooner on a taut bowline, that we were able to realise how hard it was actually blowing. Up to then the wind had seemed no more to us than a brisk, pleasant breeze, while the schooner rode the long, creaming surges lightly as a gull. Now, however, we had to doff our straw hats in a hurry to save them from being blown away, and to don close-fitting cloth caps instead, as well as our oil-skins, while it was positively hard work to cross the deck against the wind. As for the schooner, she behaved like a mad thing, careening to her gunwale as she soared to the crest of a wave and cleft its foaming summit in a blinding deluge of spray that swept her decks from the weather cat-head right aft to the companion, and plunging next moment into the trough with a strong roll to windward, and a very bedlam of yells and shrieks aloft as the gale swept between her straining masts and rigging. She shuddered as if terrified at every headlong plunge that she took, while the milk-white spume brimmed to the level of her figure-head, and roared away from her bows in a whole acre of boiling, glistening foam. The creaking and groaning of her timbers and bulkheads raised such a din that a novice would have been quite justified in fearing that the little hooker was rapidly straining herself to pieces, while more than one crash of crockery below, faintly heard through the other multitudinous sounds, told us that the wild antics of the barkie were making a very pretty general average among our domestic utensils. But, with all her creaking and groaning, the schooner now proved herself to be a truly superb sea-boat, scarcely shipping so much as a bucketful of green water, despite the merciless manner in which we were driving her; and the way in which she surmounted sea after sea, turning up her streaming weather-bow to receive its buffet, and gaily “shaking her feathers” after every plunge, was enough to make a sailor’s heart leap with pride and exultation that was not to be lessened even by the awe-inspiring spectacle of the mountains of water that in continuous procession soared up from beneath her keel and went roaring away to leeward with foaming crests that towered to the height of the cross-trees.