“Yes, sir.”
“Then kindly pass along the word to the captain of each gun to watch for the next splash and then to train his gun upon it.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” was the reply; and Fidd turned away to execute his mission as I sprang upon the rail and, grasping one of the shrouds of the main rigging to steady myself, hailed in Spanish:
“Boat ahoy! who are you, and what do you want? Lay on your oars and answer instantly, or I will fire upon you.”
I waited a full minute without eliciting any response or sign of any description from the direction in which our enemies were supposed to be lurking, and then ordered a port-fire to be burnt and a musket to be fired in their direction.
A brief interval elapsed, and then the darkness was suddenly broken into by the ghastly glare of the port-fire, with which one of the men nimbly shinned up the fore-rigging in order to send the illumination as far abroad as possible, and at the same instant a musket was fired. For a moment or two nothing whatever was to be seen but our own decks, with the men standing stripped to the waist at their guns—a row of statues half marble, half ebony, as the glare lighted up one side of each figure and left the other side in blackest shadow—the spars and rigging towering weird and ghostly up into the opaque blackness above us like those of a phantom ship; whilst the water shimmered like burning brimstone under the baleful light. Then, evidently under the impression that the boat had become visible in the gleam of the port-fire—though at that instant we could see nothing—a voice was heard from out the darkness on our starboard beam exclaiming in Spanish:
“Give way with a will, my heroes! one smart dash now and we shall be alongside yet before they can load their guns.”
The dash of oars in the water instantly followed, the whereabouts of the boat being at once made manifest by the flash of the port-fire upon the wet oar-blades, and upon the foaming ripple which gathered under the bows of the boat; and by the time that half a dozen strokes had been pulled the boat herself—a very large craft, apparently, and crowded with men—became dimly visible like a faint luminous mist driving along the surface of the inky water.
“Steady now, men,” I cried. “Take your time, and aim straight. Say when you are ready.”
“All ready with the midship gun!”