“You thought I was dead, did you, my noble captain?” he at last said, in a satyrical tone; “but you find I have life enough left yet to be at your hanging; and I have a mind, for fear I should not, to have you strung up now. Twice you have had the luck—the third time is mine.”
Willis deigned not an answer; and with a curled lip, expressive of his scorn, remained motionless.
For a short time the captain of the brig looked at him in silence, and then, apparently overcome by bodily fatigue, ordered Willis to be put in double irons, which being put upon him at once, he was carried on the berth-deck, and placed under the charge of a sentinel.
As soon as the wounded had been carried below, the brig sent a prize crew on board the captured slaver; and after a short struggle, they succeeded in reducing her negroes to submission.
By this time the ship that had been chasing the schooner, and whose boats had been repulsed in the morning, came up, and proved to be the Vixen, whose captain coming on board of the Scorpion, in consequence of Capt. De Vere’s inability to leave his cabin, and congratulated him on his good fortune in capturing the Maraposa, ordered him to proceed to Havana with the prize, and have her condemned, and her crew, or what remained of them, tried by the mixed commission;[[2]] and leaving them to make the passage, we will return to where we left De Vere, on the beach, after his duel with Willis.
| [1] | Monkey-tails. Short, iron crow-bars, used as levers in moving the breech of the guns. |
| [2] | A court established in Havana, expressly for the trial of slavers. |
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