‘With roomy deck, and guns of mighty strength
Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves,
Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length,
She seems a sea-wasp flying on the waves.’”
Brenda could not help telling Halcro, when he had spouted this stanza with great enthusiasm, “that though the description was more like a first-rate than a sloop, yet the simile of the sea-wasp served but indifferently for either.”
“A sea-wasp?” said Magnus, looking with some surprise, as the sloop, shifting her course, suddenly bore down on them: “Egad, I wish she may not show us presently that she has a sting!”
What the Udaller said in jest, was fulfilled in earnest; for, without hoisting colours, or hailing, two shots were discharged from the sloop, one of which ran dipping and dancing upon the water, just ahead of the Zetlander’s bows, while the other went through his main-sail.
Magnus caught up a speaking-trumpet, and hailed the sloop, to demand what she was, and what was the meaning of this unprovoked aggression. He was only answered by the stern command,—“Down top-sails instantly, and lay your main-sail to the mast—you shall see who we are presently.”
There were no means within the reach of possibility by which obedience could be evaded, where it would instantly have been enforced by a broadside; and, with much fear on the part of the sisters and Claud Halcro, mixed with anger and astonishment on that of the Udaller, the brig lay-to to await the commands of the captors.
The sloop immediately lowered a boat, with six armed hands, commanded by Jack Bunce, which rowed directly for their prize. As they approached her, Claud Halcro whispered to the Udaller,—“If what we hear of buccaniers be true, these men, with their silk scarfs and vests, have the very cut of them.”
“My daughters! my daughters!” muttered Magnus to himself, with such an agony as only a father could feel,—“Go down below, and hide yourselves, girls, while I”——
He threw down his speaking-trumpet, and seized on a handspike, while his daughters, more afraid of the consequences of his fiery temper to himself than of any thing else, hung round him, and begged him to make no resistance. Claud Halcro united his entreaties, adding, “It were best pacify the fellows with fair words. They might,” he said, “be Dunkirkers, or insolent man-of-war’s men on a frolic.”
“No, no,” answered Magnus, “it is the sloop which the Jagger told us of. But I will take your advice—I will have patience for these girls’ sakes; yet”——