o bear upon the felucca.

I had a strong enough crew to do this, and had no doubt as to our
ability to carry the schooner in the face of the most determined
resistance that the pirates could offer. Then, the schooner captured
and her crew safely confined below, the establishment ashore would have
no alternative but to surrender at discretion, or be annihilated by the
schooner's guns. There was only one weak point that I could see in this
scheme, which was that a considerable number of the men constituting the
shore portion of the establishment might escape into the interior of the
island, unless some means were devised to prevent them. It was,
however, not very difficult to accomplish this; for it will be
remembered that there was but one way of entrance to--and egress from--
the Cove on the land side, namely, a narrow and very dangerous zigzag
path down the face of the perpendicular cliff, a gap in which, wide
enough to prevent all effectual possibility of passage that way, might
easily be made by the explosion of a bag of powder. The preparations
for the little expedition which was to accomplish this piece of work
were made during the time that we were lying becalmed off the mouth of
the Cove; and when at length we entered, a boat, containing four seamen
in charge of a midshipman, who had been most carefully instructed
concerning the precise nature of the duty which he was to perform, was
cast adrift, just inside the Heads, but outside the islet which masked
the entrance. While they pulled away for the shore we in the felucca
stood on into the Cove, every man of us with his sword or cutlass girded
to his waist, and a brace of loaded pistols thrust into his belt,
standing ready to leap aboard the schooner--should she happen to be in
the roadstead.

We had no sooner cleared the islet, however, and fairly entered the
Cove, than we discovered that the schooner was not in harbour, and that
consequently we should be obliged to adopt the modification of plan
which I had devised in view of such a very possible contingency. But
although the _Tiburon_ was not in the Cove, the anchorage was not
tenantless, a brig of some two hundred and seventy tons being moored
therein, while apparently every boat belonging to the settlement, as
well as her own, was passing to and fro between her and the shore, those
bound shoreward being loaded to the gunwale, while those coming from it
were light. At the first glimpse of this somewhat