"A long shot to bring us to. It is plain he takes us for an unarmed vessel."
"This gives us an advantage, then," said the earl, turning his telescope in the direction of the stranger, who was plainly visible less than a mile distant, white with canvass, and fast gaining on the yacht, as she laboured slowly along under her diminished sail.
"A great one, if we can keep him in ignorance till he is close aboard," replied the captain. "By the rood! he comes down bravely. This it is, your lordship, to have sound spars, and plenty of canvass to hang on them," he added, looking moodily up, and surveying the bare poles of his own ship. "You are armed, I see, my lord. It is time I should be. Will your lordship be so good as to watch his motions. I will be on deck again in a moment."
He descended to his cabin as he spoke, and soon afterward returned armed with a cutlass, his head covered with a steel boarding cap, and with a couple of braces of pistols stuck in a leathern belt buckled round his waist. He caused his lieutenant and Mark to arm themselves in a similar manner. Every seaman, also, had a serviceable blade girded to his side, and one or more pistols in his belt; and harquebusses and cutlasses were placed on the companion and capstan, ready for indiscriminate use. Throughout the vessel, every preparation that the time and circumstances would admit of, or consummate skill on the part of its master could effect, was made; and every man stood at his post, silently and sullenly awaiting the approach of the pirate—for such it was now plain to every one was the character of the advancing stranger.
"There is a flash!" said the earl, who was intently watching the bucanier.
"No, it is a battle-lantern passed along the decks. He will not fire again seeing we do not heave to, but run us aboard, and carry us, if he can, cutlass in hand—this is the mode of fighting with these devils."
"They must not board us, Kenard!" said the earl, with calm determination in the tone of his voice.
"We will give him a touch of our quality before he comes to close quarters. An introduction before an intimate acquaintance, is my maxim, my lord."
"If you give him a broadside, I would suggest, sir, that the battery I command be added to the guns on the weather side," said Mark, who, while waiting the attack, had been pacing athwart ships near the cabin door, as if the presence of Grace in the cabin had something to do with the choice of his walk.
The captain stared at him a moment; but the respectful tones of the young man's voice, and the deference of his manner, left no room for reproof if he had designed to check the boldness of his new lieutenant.