“Whether the skipper’s fears conjured them up or not, I don’t know; but there they are, sure enough,” he quietly remarked, turning my hand in the proper direction. His practical eye had discovered what I had neglected, and as I now looked I saw what appeared a number of black spots floating on the water.
“If the wind holds good we may laugh at them,” he remarked; “but if it should chance to fall calm, the rascals would very soon be up with us.”
“But could we not fight?” I asked. “We have boarding-nettings, and plenty of hands, and muskets, and two guns; surely we might beat them off.”
“From what I have seen of the captain, he is not a fighting man,” answered Fairburn. “I trust the breeze will hold; but if not, we shall run a very great chance of having our throats cut by those fellows, if they do not think we shall make good slaves to their friends in Borneo.”
“You surely are not serious,” I remarked. “The captain would not yield without a struggle for life and liberty. But if he will not fight, we certainly have a right to make him; and I have no doubt the men will be ready enough to second us.”
Fairburn shook his head. “I fear not,” he said. “But here he comes again, with some Dutch courage in him, I suspect.”
The captain paced the deck all night in great anxiety; and I certainly do not think he could have used better means than he did to get away from the enemy. We knew that they must have been in force, and that they felt sure of being able to overcome a vessel of our size, which they were well able to distinguish to be only a merchantman. I cannot say that I felt afraid of the result, though I did not shut my eyes to it; but my hope of escaping was the strongest feeling.
The breeze rather freshened than fell as the morning came on; and as the brig had every stitch of canvas she could carry set on her, she went through the water far more rapidly than was her custom. The night was bright and clear, the stars shone forth from the sky with a brilliancy unknown in the northern latitudes, and ever and anon flashes of light burst from the ocean, and, as the ship ploughed her onward way, she left a golden thread in her wake. I could scarcely persuade myself that we were in any danger, or that we were no longer pursuing our voyage in the direction we wished to go.
The ladies remained below, trembling with fear; for the captain, for the sake of having some one more alarmed than himself, had taken care to tell them that a whole fleet of pirates were rowing as fast as they could after us. Little Maria Van Deck was the only one who behaved heroically. When I went below, I found her in the cabin, offering up prayers to Him who had power to protect us. I watched her as she knelt, the lights from the cabin-lamp falling on her upturned childish countenance. She was too much absorbed to observe me. At length she rose from her knees. She smiled when I spoke to her, and thanked her for setting so good an example.
“Oh, I have no fear,” she answered; “God is good, and will not allow us to be injured.”