“How is this?” exclaimed the Captain. “Which of the two am I to believe?”
“You may trust me,” said Roger, firmly. “My friend, though older, has less experience; but if you will allow me, I will teach him, and he in a short time will be as useful to you as I am.”
Thus the difficulty was got over, for happily the Captain did not suspect that any trick was being played him. Fortunately at first the weather was fine, and as the Moors were sober men, and not addicted to quarrel among each other, the Tiger glided over the calm sea, and everything went smoothly.
“Really, from the appearance of things, I should not have supposed that we were aboard a piratical craft,” observed Stephen, “for truly they are a very gentlemanly set of cut-throats, and I doubt if Prince Rupert’s men behaved half as well.”
“It may be not, but they did not knock all their prisoners on the head, or make them walk the plank, as these fellows are said to do; we as yet have only seen them in their good behaviour,” observed Roger.
Hamet insisted on their carrying the Tiger northward till they were about in the latitude of the rock of Lisbon. Not a ship had been sighted which they could venture to attack. They had passed in the distance squadrons of three or more large ships, but Hamet deemed it prudent to stand away from them, though he discussed the possibility of cutting off the sternmost during the night-time, but old Sam dissuaded him from making the attempt. The sun had just risen on the top-mast canvas of a ship of some size coming down before a fresh breeze from the northward, the wind about north-east. Hamet possessed a telescope, and pointing the stranger out to Roger, bade him go aloft with the telescope, and on his return report to him what he thought she was. Roger, slinging the telescope over his shoulders, climbed up the rigging, and took a steady look at the stranger. She appeared to him to be a large ship—a man-of-war—carrying probably forty guns or more, with which the Tiger would be utterly unable to cope. On coming down he told Hamet his opinion.
“If she is a merchantman, the larger her size the better prize she will prove,” he observed.
“But should she be a man-of-war, you may find that instead of taking her you are taken yourself,” said Roger.
The Captain, who seldom did anything without consulting his officers, had a talk with them on the subject. Some were inclined to run alongside the stranger and try to capture her, but others thought such a proceeding would be dangerous. The two vessels approached nearer and nearer.
“These are bold fellows to think of attacking a ship of that size,” observed Roger. “I am nearly certain that she is an English man-of-war, and if so, the Tiger will be taken, and if we are not killed, we may hope to gain our liberty.”