“Shake the reefs out of the fore-sail.”
“Hoist away the halyards.”
Commands that were executed as soon as uttered. But hardly had the halyards been belayed ere, with a report like a cannon, the sail split, and flying from the bolt-ropes, sailed to leeward like a wreath of smoke. A new fore-sail was soon bent. The trifling delay gave the Scorpion another advantage, but the sea was so rough that neither vessel could make rapid headway, and it was not until an hour before sunset that the brig was within gun-shot of the schooner.
She at once opened upon her with the weather-bow gun, and the ball striking the slaver just forward the main-mast, crashed through her deck, and caused heart-rending and appalling shrieks and yells to ascend from the poor devils it wounded in her hold. Shot followed shot with rapidity from the Scorpion’s bow-guns; and occasionally yawing, she would let fly with her weather-broadside, losing distance, however, every time she put her wheel up.
Willis refrained from firing, fearful of diminishing the distance by broaching-too, and kept silently on his course until night, when he could no longer distinguish the brig, and could only make out her position by the flashes of her guns, he suddenly put up his helm, eased off his sheets, and standing off directly before the wind for a few moments, lowered away every thing, leaving nothing to be seen but the schooner’s two tall masts, which were not visible one hundred yards in the dusky light.
The schooner’s spars had luckily escaped all injury, though her deck and bulwarks were a good deal shattered, and several of her men, and a number of the negroes, who suffered from their compact position, had been killed. Willis was so rejoiced to find his masts safe that he did not mind the other damage, and waiting until the flash of a gun told him the brig had passed by, and was still pursuing the course he had been steering, without observing his dodge, he bore away before the wind with all the sail he could carry, and arrived at his destination without again seeing the Scorpion.
Captain De Vere stood on the same course all night, and was surprised in the morning to see nothing of the slaver: cursing the carelessness of his men, he catted all the look-outs, and stopped the grog of the whole crew. And savage at having been thus baffled, he shaped his course toward Havana; determined to capture Willis on his next voyage, if he had to carry all the masts out of his brig.
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CHAPTER IV.
Did fortune guide,