This was done; and the pilot-boat lay like a log on the water, waiting the approach of our pursuer.
"Now," said Campbell, with a scowl of disappointment, "I will go below and take care of 'number one.' And Hawser," continued he, "I know those chaps better than you do. They glory in robbing a sailor's chest when there is anything in it worth taking. I advise you to do as I mean to do clothe yourself in two or three suits of your best garments; for I never knew them strip the clothing from a man's back."
"I thank you for your counsel, sir," said I; "but if they overhaul MY chest in expectation of a prize, they will be woefully disappointed."
Mr. Campbell went below a slight-built, thin-looking man, bearing a closer resemblance to Shakespeare's portrait of Prince Hal than to that of Falstaff. When, fifteen minutes afterwards, he appeared on deck, staggering under the load of three pairs of trousers, an equal number of vests, covering half a dozen shirts, with two or three silk kerchiefs around his neck, he looked, from his chin downwards, more like the "fat knight" than Prince Hal; and his thin face, peaked nose, and chin showing itself above such a portly corporation and huge limbs, gave him an unnatural appearance ludicrous in the extreme. He told me he had stowed away the remainder of his property where it would puzzle the privateersmen to find it, and chuckled over the ingenuity by which he expected to outwit the rascals.
It was not long before the armed schooner ranged alongside. She was a formidable-looking craft, with a "long Tom" and a stout armament besides. We were hailed in broken English: "You capitan, come on board directly, and bring your papers."
The captain remonstrated, saying we were short-manned, and unable to launch the boat, or to man it afterwards. They did not, or would not, understand his objections, but repeated the order in a style which silenced further remonstrance: "Come on board, Senor Capitan, this minute, and bring your papers, or I shall shoot directly!"
There was no alternative. After much labor and heavy lifting we launched the boat. Captain Moncrieff put his papers in his pocket, and leaving Mr. Campbell in charge of the schooner, followed me into the yawl. Putting his dignity along with his papers, he took an oar, I took another, and we pulled for the privateer, which by this time was out of hail to leeward. We went alongside, and were roughly ordered on deck, where we found a motley set. Some of the crew were savage, desperate-looking fellows:
"As ever scuttled ship, or cut a throat."
Others were squalid, ragged, and filthy, to a degree I had never before witnessed. There was apparently but little discipline on board, but a great deal of disputation and a continual jabbering. A ruffianly-looking fellow, with a swarthy complexion and big black whiskers, who proved to be the commander, beckoned Captain Moncrieff to the quarter-deck, where he examined the schooner's papers and various letters, all of which proved, beyond a doubt, that the schooner was an American vessel, bound to a Patriot port on the Spanish Main.
Fortunately for us our captor was a Patriot privateer, and our little vessel, under no pretext, could be regarded as a prize. If we had been bound to a port on the Spanish Main where the inhabitants had not thrown off their allegiance to the king or if the privateer had been a Spaniard, the case would have been different, and the pilot-boat would have been taken possession of and confiscated to the benefit of the captors, probably without trial. In those days other nations, following the example of France and England, trampled on the great principles of international law so far as our insulted country was concerned.