r uttering a command, the "Yo-heave-oh" of the crew, or a gang
of them, engaged upon some heavy job, and an occasional rumbling that to
my ear sounded very much like that of carronade slides in process of
being trained to bear upon some object. But if the ship was armed there
was no sign of it, her sides being decorated with _painted_ ports only,
so far as I could see. When, however, the boats had traversed about
half the distance between the brigantine and the ship, a man appeared in
the mizen rigging of the latter, and, hailing them in English in a voice
which rendered his words perfectly audible to us on board the
_Francesca_, demanded to know what they wanted. I saw Mendouca rise in
the stern-sheets of his boat, and heard him make some reply, but I could
not distinguish what it was, perhaps because he had intentionally made
it unintelligible. Whatever the words may have been, they were clearly
unsatisfactory; for the figure in the rigging waved its hand warningly,
and shouted--

"Keep off, whoever you are; you are far too strong a party to be allowed
to come alongside us; and I warn you that if you attempt to do so we
shall fire upon you! If you have any legitimate business with us let
_one_ boat, with a crew of not more than five, come alongside, and
welcome; but we will not have the whole of you if we can help it, and I
think we can!"

The boats had, up to this time, been paddling quietly and composedly
along, the men evidently husbanding their strength for a final effort;
but now, in response to a shout from Mendouca, they bent to their work,
and sent the boats foaming along in a style for which I certainly should
never have given them credit; they could scarcely have done better had
they been the British man-o'-war's men that they had pretended to be;
the oars bent, the water was churned into foam, and a miniature surge
gathered under each boat's bow as the little craft was suddenly urged to
racing speed. Then the figure in the ship's mizen rigging waved an arm,
and stepped quietly down on to the poop, which by this time was occupied
only by a band of men--evidently passengers--who, under the leadership
of a military-looking man, were handling their muskets and making ready
to open fire. At the signal given by the individual who had just
stepped out of the ship's rigging--and who was no doubt her captain--
eight hitherto closed ports in the stranger's bulwarks were suddenly
thrown open, as many dark, thr