Once well on our weather quarter, the schooner ported her helm, luffing close; her gaff-topsail, flying-jib, royal and topgallant sail melted to the hauling upon clewlines and downhauls as though they had been of snow and had vanished upon the black damp wind; but even with the tack of her mainsail up, they had to keep shaking the breeze out of the small sail she showed, to prevent her from sliding past us.
"Oh, ze sheep ahoy!" sung out one of the two figures on the quarter-deck, the man coming down to the lee rail to hail, "What sheep air you?"
As with the Centaur, so now, Vanderdecken made no response to this inquiry. He and the others stood grimly silent watching the schooner, as immobile as graven images.
I said to Imogene, "'Tis dark enough to show the phosphor upon the ship. That should give them a hint. Mark how vividly the shining crawls about these decks."
"Ze sheep ahoy!" shouted the man from the schooner that lay to windward, tossing her bows and shaking the spray off her like any champing and curvetting steed angrily reined in and smoking his impatience through his nostrils. "What sheep air you?"
Vanderdecken stepped his towering figure on to the bulwark; "The Braave," he cried, sending his majestic voice ringing like a note of thunder through the wind.
"Vhat ees your country?" yelled the other.
Vanderdecken did not apparently understand the question, but probably assuming that these sea-interrogatories followed in the usual manner, answered, "From Batavia to Amsterdam," speaking as the schooner's man did in English, but with an accent as strongly Dutch as the other's was French.
Thought I, he will see that we are a Holland ship, and as France and their High Mightinesses are on good terms he may sheer off. But even as this fancy or hope crossed my mind, a sudden order was shouted out on the schooner and in a breath the vessel's hatches began to vomit men. They tumbled up in masses, blackening the white decks, and a gleam of arms went rippling among them.
"Captain Vanderdecken!" I bawled, "that fellow is a pirate! Mind, sir, or she will be aboard of you in another minute!" And not stopping to heed the effect of my words, I grasped Imogene by the hand and ran with her off the poop. "Get you to my cabin, dearest, they are pirates and will be tumbling in masses over the rail directly."