"Ha! and what is it?"
"Why, sir, perhaps I hadn't ought to tell," said Captain Spinnet, counterfeiting the most extreme perturbation. "You see, 'twas given to me as a sort of trust, an' 't wouldn't be right for me to give up. You can take any thing else you please, for I s'pose I can't help myself."
"You are an honest codger, at any rate," said the pirate; "but, if you would live ten minutes longer, just tell me what you've got on board, and exactly where it lays."
The sight of the cocked pistol brought the old man to his senses, and, in a deprecating tone, he muttered:
"Don't kill me, sir, don't, I'll tell you all. We have got forty thousand silver dollars nailed up in boxes and stowed away under some of the boxes just forward of the cabin bulkhead, but Mr. Defoe didn't suspect that any body would have thought of looking for it there."
"Perhaps so," chuckled the pirate, while his eyes sparkled with delight. And then, turning to his own vessel, he ordered all but three of his men to jump on board the Yankee.
In a few moments the pirates had taken off the hatches, and, in their haste to get at the "silver dollars," they forgot all else; but not so with Spinnet; he had his wits at work, and no sooner had the last of the villains disappeared below the hatchway, than he turned to his boys.
"Now, boys, for our lives. Seth, you clap your knife across the fore throat and peak halyards; and you, John, cut the main. Be quick now, an' the moment you've done it, jump aboard the pirate. Andrew and Sam, you cast off the pirate's graplings; an' then you jump--then we'll walk into them three chaps aboard the clipper. Now for it."
No sooner were the last words out of the old man's mouth, than his sons did exactly as they had been directed. The fore and main halyards were cut, and the two graplings cast off at the same instant, and, as the heavy gaffs came rattling down, our five heroes leaped on board the pirate. The moment the clipper felt at liberty, her head swung off, and, before the astonished buccaneers could gain the decks of the fisherman, their own vessel was a cable's length to leeward, sweeping gracefully away before the wind, while the three men left in charge were easily secured.
"Halloa, there!" shouted Captain Spinnet, as the luckless pirates crowded around the lee gangway of their prize, "when you find them silver dollars, just let us know, will you?"