All hands knew that theirs was a desperate and unlawful enterprise—piracy. The stake was a high one, the inducements great. In a few days all hands would either be wealthy or doomed to an ignominious end.
Juan Cervillo, the leader of the rascally crew, was a Spaniard of good family He had served as an officer in the Spanish Navy; but, imbued with revolutionary sentiments, he became mixed up in an anti-monarchist plot. Exposed, he was arrested, brought to trial; and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.
Before he had done twelve months of his sentence he contrived, with the assistance of his revolutionary associates, to effect his escape from the prison-fortress of Saragossa. For some months he lay hidden in Barcelona, when his daring, undoubted courage, and vehement denunciations of all authority, gained him a prominent position amongst the anarchist community of that city.
As a delegate he attended the secret revolutionary conferences in Paris, and London, and the Mediterranean seaports; and in the course of his wanderings contrived to gather together a band of seafaring rascals in whom the piratical instincts of their forefathers lay dormant.
It wanted but a leader, bold, determined, and unscrupulous, to bind them together into a formidable band—and that leader was forthcoming in Juan Cervillo.
A daring raid upon one of the leading banks in Rome, and an equally successful coup in the commercial quarter of Marseilles, provided Juan Cervillo with ample funds. He could have retired into some remote South American town, and lived a life of luxury; but the desire for adventure and the lust for gold were too great.
With the money at his disposal he proposed to buy a swift cruiser, prey upon the world's sea-borne commerce, and recoup his outlay tenfold.
Then it was that the possibility of securing a discarded British warship occurred to him. Careful and guarded inquiries revealed the information that the Impregnable was leaving Portsmouth for Holland. He resolved to intercept her—and succeeded.
The next few days were to be spent in wholesale depredations; then, as soon as the high seas became too unsafe to continue his nefarious exploits, he meant to convey his booty to some out-of-the-way port, and, temporarily satisfied with his war upon civilisation, he would lie low till a favourable opportunity again occurred.
Thus, while the Frome, lured on a false scent, was running westward, the Independencia ex-Impregnable was steaming southward, ready like a beast of prey to pounce down upon the first unsuspecting merchant ship that came across Cervillo's course.