The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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      “Begging your pardon, captain, would it not be wiser to keep our course, and show the blackguard we don’t fear him?”

      “When we do? Sharpe, he has made up his mind an hour ago whether to lie still, or bite; my changing my course two points won’t change his mind; but it may make him declare it; and I must know what he does intend, before I run the ship into the narrows ahead.”

      “Oh, I see,” said Sharpe, half convinced.

      The alteration in the Agra’s course produced no movement on the part of the mysterious schooner. She lay to under the land still, and with only a few hands on deck, while the Agra edged away from her and entered the straits between Long Island and Point Leat, leaving the schooner about two miles and a half distant to the N.W.

      * * * *

      Ah! The stranger’s deck swarms black with men.

      His sham ports fell as if by magic, his guns grinned through the gaps like black teeth; his huge foresail rose and filled, and out he came in chase.

      * * * *

      The breeze was a kiss from Heaven, the sky a vaulted sapphire, the sea a million dimples of liquid, lucid, gold.…

      * * * *

      The way the pirate dropped the mask, showed his black teeth, and bore up in chase, was terrible: so dilates and bounds the sudden tiger on his unwary prey. There were stout hearts among the officers of the peaceable Agra; but danger in a new form shakes the brave; and this was their first pirate: their dismay broke out in ejaculations not loud but deep.…

      “Sharpe,” said Dodd, in a tone that conveyed no suspicion of the newcomer, “set the royals, and flying jib.—Port!”

      “Port it is,” cried the man at the helm.

      “Steer due South!” And, with these words in his mouth, Dodd dived to the gun deck.

      By this time elastic Sharpe had recovered the first shock; and the order to crowd sail on the ship galled his pride and his manhood; he muttered, indignantly, “The white feather!” This eased his mind, and he obeyed orders briskly as ever. While he and his hands were setting every rag the ship could carry on that tack, the other officers, having unluckily no orders to execute, stood gloomy and helpless, with their eyes glued, by a sort of sombre fascination, on that coming fate.…

      Realize the situation, and the strange incongruity between the senses and the mind in these poor fellows! The day had ripened its beauty; beneath a purple heaven shone, sparkled, and laughed a blue sea, in whose waves the tropical sun seemed to have fused his beams; and beneath that fair, sinless, peaceful sky, wafted by a balmy breeze over those smiling, transparent, golden waves, a bloodthirsty Pirate bore down on them with a crew of human tigers; and a lady babble babble babble babble babble babble babbled in their quivering ears.

      But now the captain came bustling on deck, eyed the loftier sails, saw they were drawing well, appointed four midshipmen a staff to convey his orders; gave Bayliss charge of the carronades, Grey of the cutlasses, and directed Mr. Tickell to break the bad news gently to Mrs. Beresford, and to take her below to the orlop deck; ordered the purser to serve out beef, biscuit, and grog to all hands, saying, “Men can’t work on an empty stomach: and fighting is hard work;” then beckoned the officers to come round him. “Gentlemen,” said he, confidentially, “in crowding sail on this ship I had no hope of escaping that fellow on this tack, but I was, and am, most anxious to gain the open sea, where I can square my yards and run for it, if I see a chance. At present I shall carry on till he comes up within range: and then, to keep the Company’s canvas from being shot to rags, I shall shorten sail; and to save ship and cargo and all our lives, I shall fight while a plank of her swims. Better to be killed in hot blood than walk the plank in cold.”

      The officers cheered faintly: the captain’s dogged resolution stirred up theirs.…

      “Shorten sail to the taupsles and jib, get the colors ready on the halyards, and then send the men aft.…”

      Sail was no sooner shortened, and the crew ranged, than the captain came briskly on deck, saluted, jumped on a carronade, and stood erect. He was not the man to show the crew his forebodings.

      (Pipe.) “Silence fore and aft.”

      “My men, the schooner coming up on our weather quarter is a Portuguese pirate. His character is known; he scuttles all the ships he boards, dishonors the women, and murders the crew. We cracked on to get out of the narrows, and now we have shortened sail to fight this blackguard, and teach him not to molest a British ship. I promise, in the Company’s name, twenty pounds prize money to every man before the mast if we beat him off or out-manœuvre him; thirty if we sink him; and forty if we tow him astern into a friendly port. Eight guns are clear below, three on the weather side, five on the lee; for, if he knows his business, he will come up on the lee quarter: if he doesn’t, that is no fault of yours nor mine. The muskets are all loaded, the cutlasses ground like razors—”

      “Hurrah!”

      “We have got women to defend—”

      “Hurrah!”

      “A good ship under our feet, the God of justice overhead, British hearts in our bosoms, and British colors flying—run ’em up!—over our heads.” (The ship’s colors flew up to the fore, and the Union Jack to the mizzen peak.) “Now lads, I mean to fight this ship while a plank of her (stamping on the deck) swims beneath my foot and—what do you say?”

      The reply was a fierce “hurrah!” from a hundred throats, so loud, so deep, so full of volume, it made the ship vibrate, and rang in the creeping-on pirate’s ears. Fierce, but cunning, he saw mischief in those shortened sails, and that Union Jack, the terror of his tribe, rising to a British cheer; he lowered his mainsail, and crawled up on the weather quarter. Arrived within a cable’s length, he double reefed his foresail to reduce his rate of sailing nearly to that of the ship; and the next moment a tongue of flame, and then a gash of smoke, issued from his lee bow, and the ball flew screaming like a seagull over the Agra’s mizzen top. He then put his helm up, and fired his other bow-chaser, and sent the shot hissing and skipping on the water past the ship. This prologue made the novices wince. Bayliss wanted to reply with a carronade; but Dodd forbade him sternly, saying, “If we keep him aloof we are done for.”

      The pirate drew nearer, and fired both guns in succession, hulled the Agra amidships, and sent an eighteen pound ball through her foresail. Most of the faces were pale on the quarter-deck; it was very trying to be shot at, and hit, and make no return. The next double discharge sent one shot smash through the stern cabin window, and splintered the bulwark with another, wounding a seaman slightly.

      “Lie down forward!” shouted Dodd, through his trumpet. “Bayliss, give him a shot.”

      The carronade was fired with a tremendous report, but no visible effect. The pirate crept nearer, steering in and out like a snake to avoid the carronades, and firing those two heavy guns alternately into the devoted ship. He hulled the Agra now nearly every shot.

      The two available carronades replied noisily, and jumped as usual; they sent one thirty-two pound shot clean through the schooner’s deck and side; but that was literally all they did worth speaking of.

      “Curse them!” cried Dodd; “load them with grape! they are not to be trusted with ball. And all my eighteen-pounders dumb! The coward won’t come alongside and give them a chance.”

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