"We shall return to our duty."
"Oh! no doubt, when we have got the weather gauge of you; but we mean to keep it, you cowardly picaroon!" said Estremera. "Up yet with the breech of the gun—cover as many of the wretches as you can."
"For pity's sake, senor," said Fra Anselmo, laying one hand on the captain's arm and the other on the trunnion of the brass cannon.
On looking down the hatch way, at that moment, my heart sickened when I beheld so many cowards crouching in a cold sweat beneath; so many uplifted hands; so many olive faces turning livid with terror; so many dark and expressive eyes glaring upward to one point,—the muzzle of the brass gun, which was to belch down death and mutilation among them; but there too lay Antonio el Cubano, covered with blood, and gazing at us with something like the smile of a mocking fiend in his countenance.
"We are ready to surrender, senores," said Benito Ojeda; "so, if you fire, our blood be upon your heads, and on that of El Cubano, who lured us into mischief!"
Their united cries for mercy became so appalling, that, though they would have yielded no mercy to us had the circumstances of the case been reversed, Estremera consented to withdraw the cannon on three conditions:
First, that they would surrender every thing they possessed in the shape of a weapon.
Second, that they would handcuff and deliver up all their ringleaders.
Third, that they would swear to be faithful to him and his mates for the remainder of the voyage.
To these offers they agreed, and about forty Albacete knives and creeses were thrown upon deck.