Hard Cash

iger on his unwary prey. There were stout hearts among the officers of the peaceable Agra; but danger in a new form shakes the brav

st come on deck to en

nveyed no suspicion to the new-comer,

cried the ma

h these words in his mouth,

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

reeze is warm. Ah! and there’s a little ship sailing along: here, Freddy, Freddy darling, leave off beating the sail

some infantine fiend, was cut short by ponderous blows and tremendous smashing bel

guns,” said a mi

igar from his mouth, and smelt powder “What, fo

im a signal, and

ciated the remark: she prattled on till s

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,

o serve out beet 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, wher

ly; the captain’s dogged r

to say, there were two gentlemen in the Agra to whom the pirate’s approach was not altogether unwelcome. Colonel Kenealy and Mr. Fullalove were rival sportsmen and rival theorists. Kenealy stood out for a smooth bore and a four-ounce ball; Fullalove for a rifle of his own con

. Besides, to a fellow like me, who has had the luxury of popp

egretfully. “But I reckon we sha

much as a pirate as a solution. Indeed, Kenealy, in the act of charging his piece, was heard to mutter, “Now, this is lucky.” However, these theorists were

ib, get the colours ready on the ha

e. Dodd hastily bolted the cabin-door, and looked with trembling lip and piteous earnestness in Ken

ind to them with deep emotion, yet

r you, that shows me you have a great heart. My dear friends, I have been unlucky enough to bring my children’s fortune on board this ship: here it is under my shirt. Fourteen thousand pounds! This weighs me down. Oh, i

Kenealy cheerfully, “this is n

his ship and cargo, I must be where

ly — “Captain Dodd, may I never see Broadway again, and never s

” said Ken

your true hands have pulled off my heart. Good-bye, for a few minutes. The time is short. I’ll just offer a prayer to

ain came briskly on deck, saluted, jumped on a carronade, and s

ilence for

ight this blackguard, and teach him 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-manoeuvre him; thirty if we sink him; and forty if we tow him astern into a friendl

rra

ot women t

rra

un ’em up! — over our heads.” (The ship’s colours flew up to the fore, and the Union Jack to the mizen peak.) “Now, la

d his mainsail, and crawled up on the weather quarter. Arrived within a cable’s length, he double-reef’ed 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 gush of smoke, issued from his lee bow, and the ball flew screaming like a seagul

resail. 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 dou

shouted Dodd. “Bayli

t nearer, steering in and out like a snake to avoid the carronades, and firing those tw

they sent one thirty-two pound shot clean through the schooner’s de

ot to be trusted with ball. And all my eighteen-pounders du

is helm down ere the smoke cleared, and got three carronades to bear, heavily laden with grape. Several pirates fell, dead o

itly, now right astern, now on the quarter, that the ship could seldom bring more

of the men below as possible; but, for all h

nt-blank distance. He made her pass a bitter time. And her captain! To see the splintering hull, the parting shrouds, the shivered gear, and hear the shrieks and groans of his wounded; and he unable to reply in kind! The sweat of agon

peppered with grape, the channel opened; in five

mizen shrouds, wounded the gaff, and cut the jib-stay. Down fell that powerful sail into the water, and dragged across the ship’s forefoot, stopping her way to the open sea

ed in the Agra’s mizen top, and the man at the pirate’s helm jumped into the air and fell dead: both Theorists claimed him. Then the three carronades peppered him hotly; and he hurled an iron shower back with fatal effect. Then at la

ough his trumpet. He then got the jib clear, and made wha

ferocious cries. The white Britons, drunk with battle now, naked to the waist, grimed with powder, and spotted like leopards with blood, their and their mates’, replied with loud undaunted cheers and a deadly hail of grape from the quarter-deck; while the master-gunner and his mates, loading with a rapidity the mixed races opposed could not rival, hulled the schooner well between wind and wat

insail and threw rapidly ahead, with a slight bearing to windward, and dismoun

t retiring a little way to make a more deadly attack than ever: he would soon wear, and cross the Agra’s defenceless

chance, the last, of sinking or disabling the Destroyer. As the ship obeyed, and a deck-gun bellow

er. Was she com

lag floated from

o hope, Monk fired again; and just then a pale face came close to Dodd’s,

pirate’s consort coming up to finish them; and said, with t

e schooner’s foremast so nearly through that it trembled and nodded, and presently snapped with a loud crack, and came down like a broken tree, with the yard and sail; the latter overlapping the de

crew raised a

d, with his trumpet.

d, which was now rising to a stiff breeze. In doing this he crossed the crippled pirate’s bows, within eighty yards; and sore was the temptation to r

“Can you two hinder the

d Fullalove; “eh, Colonel?”

fell over dead, and the linstock flew out of his hand. A tall Portuguese, with a movement of rage, snatched it up and darted to the gun: the Y

head had come round to windward,

d Papuans glittered fiendishly; and the wounded captain raised his sound arm and had a signal hoisted to his consort, and she bore up in chase, and jamming her fore lateen flat as a board, lay far nearer the wind than the Agra could, and sailed three feet to her two besides. On this superiority being made clear, the situation of the merchant vessel, though not so utterly desperate as before Monk

es all round the

a was

f rain fell, and the wind was beginnin

us kneel down and pray for

t about a minute: his great thoughtful eye saw no more the enemy, the sea, nor

a way out of them both with such a breez

” groane

mused

id he softly, li

ay,

d he, still like one w

the mates and the gunner, to ensure cooperation in the del

en wind and water, and hacking the deck clear of his broken mast and yards. The other, fresh, an

e ship’s change of tactics, changed his own, luffed up, and gave the ship a

crammed with grape and canister. The rapid discharge of eight guns made the ship tremble, and enveloped her in thick smoke; loud shrieks and groans were heard from the schooner: the smoke cleared; the pirate’s mainsail hung on deck,

made a hole in the foresail. This done, he hoisted his mainsail again in a trice, sent his wounded below, flung his dead overboard, to the horror of their foes, and came after the flying ship, yawing and firing his bo

id them flat on the forecastle. He also compelled Kenealy and Fullalove to come

er right in her course, another in her wake, following her wi

n both sides ceased, and there was

g fresh ha

esh schooner he had put his ship before the wind, but also by a double, daring, masterstroke to hurl his monster ship bodily on the other. Without a foresail she could never get out of her way. The pirate crew had stopped the leak, and cut away and unshipped the

the sail while their fighting men seized their matchlocks and trained the guns. They were well commanded by an hero

what majesty the endu

l, conned and steered the great ship down on a hundred matchlocks and a grinning

in a deep calm voice, wi

oard i

little. The man forward ma

said Dod

t it

astern sent a mischievous shot and knoc

deck, and took his place in silence, and laid his unshaking hand o

nt; she seemed to know: she reared her lofty f

ful shout: it drew, the schooner gathered way, and their furious cons

said Dod

t it

p’s bows, and snapped their muskets and matchlocks at their solitary executioner on the ship’s gangway, and out flew their knives like crushed wasp’s stings. CRASH! the Indiaman’s cutwater in thick smoke beat in the schooner’s broadside: down went her masts to leeward like fishing-rods whipping the water; there was a horrible shrieking yell; wild forms heaped off on the Agra, and were hacked to pieces almost ere they reached the deck — a surge, a chasm in the, sea, filled with an

aces, the head

hey got near, the captain of the triumphant ship fell down on his hands and knees, his head sunk over the