The Black Roger was pulled down quicker than it takes to tell of it, and the American ensign run up in its place. But it was now too late to correct the error.
The stranger luffed sharply, and soon her main and mizzen yards swung quickly and evenly with the man-o’-war’s precision. Then, letting go his bow-line, he came about and stood across our hawse; at the same time clapping on and sheeting home every rag possible below and aloft.
We were a little to windward of his course now, but he was well ahead. I saw that when he tacked ship it would only be a question of minutes before we were right under his guns, unless we wore ship instantly and ran for it. Even then he would probably be close enough to knock the spars out of us before we could get out of range.
He was evidently determined to find out the meaning of that joke about the flying of a black flag on the high seas.
“Shall we turn and run, or try and pass him to the windward?” I asked Benson, hurriedly, intimating that the former was what I should choose, for I knew he would choose the opposite.
“Head your course, d——n you! If you fail to clear him, you are a dead man,” he roared.
The villain didn’t notice the smile I felt on my lips when he said this, or he would probably have finished with me then and there. He must have been much upset to have talked so wild, for he was usually cool enough.
“Get the men below in the fore-hold,” he bawled to his man, Johnson, and that fellow bundled them down the fore-hatch like sheep, leaving only about a dozen to lounge about the deck as if they were sailors.
By the time this was accomplished we had closed the gap between the vessels to less than half a mile. The Englishman was on the starboard tack and crossing our course with everything drawing. He was heeling over and driving through a perfect smother of foam, and I could see the men running about the decks as they went to stations for stays. He had gotten the weather-gage of us without difficulty.
In a few moments he luffed again on our weather-bow about a quarter of a mile distant. Then, without waiting to use signals, he fired a shot across our course just under our jib-boom end.