Little by little the Tiger pulled up to windward of the buccaneer and the men below in the gun deck could be heard cheering as their advance brought the black sloop more and more nearly opposite the yawning mouths of the Tiger's port carronades.
The shore was now less than half a mile distant. Though making all possible speed, the pirate schooner seemed to rise on the waves with a more sluggish heave than before. Job, watching her through the spyglass, turned to Isaiah Hawkes.
"Don't she look sort o' soggy to you?" he asked. "I can't quite make out whether that's a hole in her planking or—by the Great Hook Block! See there, now, when she lifts! One of our shots landed smack on her waterline. No wonder they're trying to beach her!"
A moment later the Tiger had hauled fairly abreast and the two schooners plunged along a bare hundred yards apart. Not a head showed above the high weather bulwark of the Revenge. Only the muzzles of her guns peered grimly from their ports in her black side. There was something sinister about this apparently deserted ship, lurching drunkenly shoreward, with her torn sails and broken rigging flapping in the breeze, and the pirate flag flying at her peak.
Job made a megaphone of his hands and raised his voice in a hail.
"Ahoy, Revenge!" he boomed. "Will you surrender peacefully, and haul down that flag?"
There was silence for a full ten seconds. Then a musket cracked and a bullet imbedded itself in the mainmast by Job's head.
"All right, boys," he said, without moving, "let 'em have it! Ready, port battery? Fire!" Jeremy and Bob, clinging side by side to the hatch-combing, felt the planking quiver under them at the series of mighty discharges, and saw the pirate schooner check and stagger like an animal that has received its death wound.
Only one of her guns was able to reply, the round-shot screaming high and wide. But on she went, and the steep beach below the dunes was very close now.
Captain Job stood by the hatchway. "All hands up, ready to board her," he ordered, and the crew, swarming on deck, ran to their places by the longboat amidships.