Gerald grasped Owen’s hand. “Faith, you’ve had a narrow escape!” he exclaimed.
“Indeed, we have,” answered Owen; “and, I fear, have lost a large number of our crew. Had you not come up, we should every one of us been killed.”
“Where are Miss Ferris and her father?” asked Norman Foley, turning round to Owen, whom he now recognised.
“They are safe, I trust, below, and will be glad to see you and hear that they have no longer cause for apprehension,” answered Owen. “I have too many duties on deck to go.”
The lieutenant sprang below, just at the moment that Captain Olding ordered the crew of the corvette to return on board and the grappling-irons to be cast loose.
“We must chase the pirate and punish him for his audacity,” he exclaimed.
It was some time, however, before the order could be obeyed and the corvette got clear of the merchantman. Gerald had remained on board. “I ought to tell Mr Foley, or he will be left with you,” he said; and he followed his lieutenant below. Before he returned on deck the ships were clear, and the corvette was making sail to go in chase of the pirate.
Owen had persuaded Mr Ferris and Ellen to go into the hold, to which they had been hurried when the first shot had been fired by the pirate. Owen had for some time before been suspicious of the strange sail, which he saw standing up on his starboard quarter, and, thinking that she was very probably an enemy’s privateer, was not taken altogether unprepared. He had ordered his powder and shot to be brought on deck, and the guns to be loaded and run out ready for action; when, therefore, a shot from the stranger came flying close to his stern, he fired in return, and at the same time making all sail, endeavoured to keep ahead of her. She now fired shot after shot from her foremost guns, and he had no longer any doubt that she was an enemy which had borne down on the fleet, hoping to pick up one or two of the merchant vessels and be off with them before morning.
“The fellow has made a mistake in attacking us,” observed Owen to his first mate. “His greediness tempted him to attack a big ship—he might have succeeded had he run alongside some of the brigs astern.”
Pompey, who had accompanied Mr Ferris and his daughter below, returned to report that he had seen them safe in the hold. “De gentlemen want to come back and fight, but de young lady no let him—she cry so, and hold his hand, and say he get kill; so at last he sit down and stay quiet,” remarked Pompey.