My heart gave a jump of pleasure.
“It’s Mr Ormsby’s chest,” I answered, and I told him what I had done. The launch and pinnace were ordered up, and in a short time the chest was weighed and safely got on board, and I got highly praised for being the means of saving it. The surviving pirates being taken out of the prows, they were set on fire, and we watched them burning to the water’s edge, while we sailed away after their companions.
“What are we to do with these black fellows, I wonder?” I asked of Sergeant Turbot.
“Why, I suppose, Jack, they will all be hung, as a lesson to their friends,” he replied, “not to go and do the same; but to my mind these fellows are terribly hard to teach.”
Chapter Eleven.
In the Pirate Stronghold.
The navigation of those seas is ticklish work, and we knew that unless great care was taken, we might run the old Roarer on a rock, as we had the little Fawn, with much more serious consequences—once hard and fast, we were not likely to get the old barky off again. A lookout was stationed at the foretop mast-head, and at the fore yard-arms, to watch the appearance of the sea, and give notice of any change of colour; while the hands were at their stations, ready to shorten sail, or to brace the yards sharp up, should any danger appear ahead. Danger, however, was not likely to deter Captain Sharpe in any course which he conceived it his duty to follow.
“These pirates must be put down,” I heard him observe to Mr Blunt. “The only way to do so is to follow them up whenever we can get tidings of them, to burn their villages and their vessels, and to hang them whenever we can catch them in the act. They understand no other kind of treatment. I remember once, in the Mediterranean, capturing a Greek pirate. We let him go, as he showed a letter from the master of a merchantman, in which great gratitude was expressed for the way in which the Greek had behaved. We found, however, that the fellow had plundered the vessel of everything of value immediately after he had got possession of the letter. I caught him again the following year, and asked him how, after once he had been so generously pardoned, he could think of returning to his piratical ways.
”‘Ah, signore,’ he answered, ‘it is our nature. Had you hung me then, I should no longer have gone pirating.’
“We put an effectual stop to his career this time, and he submitted with the most perfect grace; it was our business to hang him—it was his fate to be hung.”
I did not forget our captain’s remarks. I felt much pleased when Mr Ormsby sent to desire that I might attend on him while he lay suffering from his wound.