During this time the wind had lulled until it was no more than a full sailing breeze, but the sea was yet running mountains high.
No blood had been spilled aboard our craft after the first successful shot, and even while the engagement was on had the sailors cared for the bodies of their two dead messmates.
Well, the prize was ours, providing we could board her, and I came out of the fever of excitement nervous and trembling, as if having lived four and twenty hours under the very shadow of the death angel’s wings.
The America was hove to, for it would be useless to think of boarding the stranger while the sea was so high, and until the next morning we lay close by the prize.
Meanwhile, Simon and I, aided by two of the sailors, kept watch over the prisoners.
During all this time we had had no opportunity to speak with the captain, and, in fact, made no especial effort to do so.
The chance would come later without our seeming to court it, and meanwhile four armed men should be able to prevent that single Britisher, who lurked somewhere in the hold, from doing us a mischief.
The prisoners remained in the brig, apparently unable to escape from such close quarters, and, despite all our efforts, neither my comrade nor I could discover in what way one of them had gotten free.
The capture of the ship was a godsend to us at that time, for, with such a prize before them, the men who had been on the verge of mutiny could not well insist that the omens had been for evil, and it was, during this night at least, as if they had forgotten all the disagreeable and mysterious events.