“Aim high, lads,” said the captain to his two mates who had charge of them. “Our best chance will be to knock away some of his spars.”
“Ay, aye, sir,” was the answer, given in a cheerful voice, which, at all events, betrayed no fear.
It was satisfactory to feel that we were to have a stroke for life, and yet, as the schooner drew near, and I observed through my glass the villainous-looking, well-armed fellows who crowded her decks, and saw the size of her guns, I felt that we had but little chance of escaping.
“Now, lads, see what you can do,” cried the captain, who was narrowly watching the schooner.
Our two pop-guns gave out their puffs of smoke, and a couple of holes in the enemy’s sails showed that the aim had not been bad, but no other damage was done.
Still the schooner did not fire, but came silently and stealthily gliding on in a way which was much more calculated to try our courage than if her crew had been shouting and gesticulating. It showed that they had perfect confidence in their own power. The mates loaded and fired their guns again. An after mainbrace aboard the schooner was shot away, and it made her head incline a little more towards us.
We were now almost within pistol-shot of each other, when I saw some thirty muskets levelled at us, and the next instant a rattling shower of bullets came whistling round our heads. Several of our poor fellows fell: the rest fired in return, but before the smoke cleared away, with a loud crash the pirate ran us aboard, and fifty fierce-looking desperadoes sprang shouting on our deck.
I had armed myself with a cutlass, resolving to fight to the last, though fully expecting to be cut to pieces. Ready stood barking furiously on one side of me; Peter kept on the other. Captain Buckwheat proved that he was a man, but he was cut down by a pirate’s sword, as was one of the mates close to me, and in less than a minute half our crew lay bleeding on the deck. Our opponents were mostly blacks—though there were brown fellows also—and as they were shouting in English, I concluded that they were either runaway American slaves or vagabond negroes from the West India Islands. Not that I thought much about what they were at the time; indeed, the grinding of the two vessels together, the cries and shrieks of the combatants, the smoke and rattle of firearms, and the fall of spars and blocks from aloft completely bewildered me, besides which all my energies were required for my own defence.
Scarcely an instant after the pirates had reached our decks, I found myself set on by a huge brown fellow, who had led the boarders, and was apparently an officer among them. He was a good swordsman, and had not Ready flown at his legs, and Peter kept poking at him with a boarding-pike, he would soon have put me hors de combat. With their aid I managed to defend myself till several other fellows set upon me, and, overmatched, the big pirate had his sword uplifted to cut me down, when a black man sprang forward and interposed his own weapon between it and my head, shouting at the same time—
“Back, all of you. That man’s life is sacred, and the lad’s too. You’ll own it when I tell you.”