The clews of the topsails were lashed to the lower yard-arms; the topsail-yards slung with iron chains; round, grape, and cannister shot got up from the hold; the boarding-pikes taken down from the racks and laid at hand; the arm-chests unlocked, and their murderous contents of muskets, bayonets, pistols, cutlasses, and tomahawks or pole-axes produced; powder-horns and flasks, for priming the guns, filled and placed in readiness; rammers, sponges, and priming-wires distributed to the guns; preventer braces rove, and stoppers for the rigging sent up into the tops, or placed in different parts of the deck. The carpenter got ready his shot-plugs and top-maul; the armorer examined the locks of the fire-arms; the gunner paraded his wads, and opened the magazine beneath the cabin floor. Morton, to whom Captain Williams had deputed the charge of the two females, descended to the steerage, attended by two or three seamen, and hauled all the spare sails out of the sail-room, with which he formed a small hollow coil in the cable tier. These sails, being formed into long hard rolls and placed upon the cables, formed a rampart that, from its non-elasticity, would more effectually check the progress of a round shot than a greater thickness of oak plank.
Having finished the castle, he could not forbear passing into the cabin to see its future occupant. Isabella received him with a blush and a smile.
"What is the meaning of all this noise and bustle overhead?" said she.
"There is a strange ship in sight," said Morton, after a pause, "and we are almost sure that she has hostile intentions towards us." Isabella became pale as marble. "It is, in short, the man-of-war that was in St. Blas when we left there."
"Good God!" said the young lady, clasping her hands in agony, "what will become of us?"
"Do not allow yourself to be overcome with causeless alarm; we shall, if possible, run away; but if not, we must resort to certain arguments to convince her commander and crew of the impropriety and rudeness of their interfering in an affair that does not concern them."
"But if we are taken, what will become of you?"
"I suspect, dearest Isabella, that you will search in vain through the Albatross to find a single person, man or boy, that is prepared to admit the probability, nay, even the possibility, of such a conclusion. We are nominally inferior, but in reality superior, to our antagonist. In the mean time, I have been preparing a place of safety for you and Transita, where it is next to impossible that you should be in the way of danger."
"But you," said she, looking at him with tearful eyes.
"My life, my sweet girl, is in the hands of Him that gave it; and to His watchful care and boundless goodness I cheerfully and confidingly commit it."