"I meant lee bow!" said Bill, anxious to please. "Anyhow, I see a craft, your Honor. I think she is a plate ship from the Spanish Main. Shall we run her down?"
"Give me the glass!" exclaimed the Pirate Captain: and through that instrument, which the ignorant might have mistaken for a battered tin horn, he scrutinized the "craft," which lay on the water at some distance.
"'Tis not a plate ship!" he announced at length. "I think we have had enough plate ships lately. This is a Dutch lugger from Samarcand, laden with raisins and fig-paste and lichi nuts and cream dates. I shouldn't wonder if she had narghiles too, and scimitars,—I need a new scimitar,—and all sorts of things. Up helm, and crowd on all sail in pursuit!"
"Ay, ay, sir! stunsels?"
"Stunsels, balloon-jibs, topgallant spinnakers, royal skyscrapers, everything you can think of. Ha! we are off! Row hard now, Bill! The lubbers are asleep, and we shall run them down easily. Are the cutlasses ready?"
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"Ho! we are gaining on them. Ho, ho! bend to your oars, my hearties! grappling-chains ready there! ho! on to the chase!"
Now Phil was very busy making a fly for lake trout, and explaining the manufacture of it to Peggy; and Peggy was absorbed in watching him, and in counting the number of separate aches she felt after her first lesson in rowing. Moreover, the bloody pirates had conducted their conversation in a half-whisper, and the wind was the other way. But suddenly, Peggy looked up and saw them, now at only a few yards distance.
"Good gracious!" she cried. "What is it? Do look, Phil!"