ll
remained.

At length we reached the mouth of the channel, and I dared no longer
withdraw my eyes for a single instant from Carera. The passage was
exceedingly narrow, so confined, indeed, that a man might have leaped
from either rail into the seething breakers on each side of us. The
little craft bobbed and pitched as she glided into the troubled water,
the huge sail rattled and flapped, and we seemed to visibly lose way.
At this juncture a voice hailed us in execrably bad Spanish from the gig
astern, peremptorily exclaiming:

"Heave to, you rascally pack of piratical cut-throats, or I will fire
into you!"

"Pull, men, _pull_!" I urged. "Here is the breeze close aboard of us."

At the same instant our great lateen sail swelled heavily out, wavered,
jerked the sheet taut, and collapsed again. The Spaniards greeted the
sight with a joyous shout, and, whereas they had hitherto been toiling
in grimmest silence, they now burst out with mutual cries of
encouragement and a jabber of congratulatory remarks which were almost
instantly cut short by the crack of a musket, the ball of which clipped
very neatly through the brim of my straw hat. Again the sail flapped,
collapsed, flapped again, and then filled steadily out.

"Hurrah, lads!" I exclaimed. "Half a dozen more strokes with the
sweeps and the breeze will fairly have got hold of us. See how the
sheet tautens out!"

"In bow-oar, and stand by to heave your grapnel!" I heard a voice say
in English close underneath our counter; and the next instant came the
rattle of the oar as it was laid in upon the thwart. Courtenay too
heard the words, and knowing well what they meant left his sweep and
sprang aft.

"Give way, men, give way!" now came up from the boat. "Spring her, you
sodjers, _spring her_, and take us within heaving distance, or they will
get away from us yet. See how the witch is gathering way! Bend your
backs, now; lift her! _well_ pulled! another stroke--and another--that's
your sort; _now_ we travel--hang it, men, _pull_, can't ye! heave there,
for'ard, and see if you can reach her."

Courtenay was crouching low behind the bulwarks on the watch for the
grapnel, and in another second it came plump in over the taffrail.
Before it had time to catch anywhere, however, my chum had pounced upon
it, and, tossing it into the air just as the bowman in the boat was
bringing a strain upon the chain, the instrument dropped overboard
again.

"You lubb