The Rover's Secret Part 10

"Every inch of it, senor," was the reply.

"I see there is shoal water over there," said I, indicating the direction with a nod of the head. "Now, what is to hinder you from rigging out your sweeps and sweeping the felucca into such shallow water as will prevent the frigate yonder from approaching you near enough to reach you with her guns? The _Pinta_ is in light trim, and with all hands at the sweeps you ought to be able to move her pretty smartly through the water. And even should the frigate send her boats after us, we might be able to keep out of their way until the breeze comes."

"Excellent, senor!" he exclaimed rapturously. "I had never thought of that. Ah, it is you gentlemen of the navy who, after all, have the ideas! Out sweeps, forward there!" he continued; "we will escape that accursed Englishman yet."

The crew, aroused by the hopeful tone in which Carera spoke, scrambled up off their knees, and rigging out the sweeps soon had the little craft heading direct for the sh.o.r.e and moving through the water at the rate of some four knots. The frigate seeing this hoisted her ensign and fired a gun as a signal for us to heave to, of which we took not the slightest notice. I placed myself at the tiller, Carera took up a position on the stem-head, conning the felucca, and Courtenay devoted all his energies to the encouragement of the men as they laboured at the sweeps.

Meanwhile, the breeze was gradually creeping nearer to us every minute, which, whilst an advantage in so far as it lessened the time during which the men would have to toil at the sweeps, was more than counterbalanced by the disagreeable fact that it would enable the frigate to approach so much the nearer to us before she in her turn became becalmed.

At length the n.o.ble craft shot across the outer boundary of the calm belt, and the instant that her canvas flapped to the masts her helm was gently ported until she headed straight for us, when another gun was fired; and before the smoke had cleared away she had swept round until her whole broadside--numbering eighteen guns--was bearing upon us.

"Now," shouted Courtenay, "look out for squalls!"

The words had scarcely left his lips when _bang_! went another gun, and we saw the shot come skipping and ricochetting across the gla.s.sy surface of the water straight toward us, ploughing up long steamy jets of spray at every bound, and finally, with a skurrying splash, disappearing about a dozen yards astern of us. After this there was a pause of about half a minute, apparently to see whether we were really foolhardy enough to persist in attempting our escape--and also, probably, to give the muzzles of their guns a little more elevation--when, seeing that the sweeps were still kept steadily going, she let fly her whole broadside at us with a rattling crash, which caused the Spaniards with one accord to let go their hold upon the sweeps and drop flat on their faces on the deck. Another moment and the shot came hurtling about us, some overhead and a very fair dose on each side of the little craft, so close too that the spray flashed in over the deck in a regular shower, whilst one shot came crashing in through the taffrail, flying close past me where I was standing at the tiller, smashing through the head of the companion and then flying out over the bows, pa.s.sing through the sail on its way and missing Carera's head by a hair's-breadth.

"Eighteen-pounders, by the powers!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Courtenay, turning to me.

"A narrow squeak that for you, old boy? Now, then, my hearties," to the Spaniards, "tail on to those sweeps again, and look sharp about it.

Remember, if we are caught away goes your chance of making a fortune out of friend Giuseppe yonder."

This suggestion aroused anew their courage, or their cupidity, and with a shout they sprang once more to their feet and to the sweeps.

Meanwhile, the breeze had crept in until it had overtaken the frigate, which at once filled on the starboard tack, keeping her luff until she had gathered good way, when she squared away and once more came booming into the calm belt, nearing us almost half a mile by this manoeuvre.

"It is no good, excellencies; we shall have to give up!" exclaimed Carera, coming aft. "We are now as close in as we dare go; and if that diabolical frigate fires another broadside at us she will blow us out of the water. Port your helm, senor--hard a-port! the coral is close under our keel."

"Hard a-port!" I responded. "But why give up, my good fellow? The frigate is as close now as she dare come to us. You may take my word for it that her captain will not run the risk of plumping his ship ash.o.r.e for the sake of such an insignificant craft as the _Pinta_. Ha, look out! here comes another broadside."

How we escaped that second storm of shot I am sure I cannot tell, for we were now almost within point-blank range; but escape we did, although for a single instant the whole air around us seemed filled with iron, so thick and close did the shot fly about us. The sail was pierced in three places, but beyond that no harm was done.

"He is after us with the boats! He will waste no more powder and shot upon us," exclaimed Courtenay; and sure enough on looking astern I saw two boats just dropping into the water.

"We must give up--we must give up," cried our crew as they saw this; and leaving their sweeps they came aft in a body with the request that Carera would hoist the Spanish ensign and haul it down again in token of our surrender.

"No, no," I exclaimed; "see how the breeze is creeping down to us; it will be here as soon as the boats--or sooner, if you stick to the sweeps--and then I will engage that we sc.r.a.pe clear somehow. Is there no place, Carera, that we can run into, and so dodge the frigate! We can laugh at the boats if we once get the breeze."

"Place! of course there is!" exclaimed the skipper, his courage again reviving; "there is the Boca de Guajaba, not half a mile from us on our larboard bow. Once in there we can run up at the back of Romano--I know the channel--and so effectually give the frigate the slip. Back to your sweeps, children! we will never yield until we are obliged."

Again the crew manned the sweeps, and again--animated by another judicious reminder from Courtenay of the treasure awaiting them in the Conconil lagoons--they bent their backs and lashed the water into foam as they gathered way upon the felucca; and once more Carera went forward to con the craft through the dangerous channel we were now fast approaching. Meanwhile the two boats--a gig and a cutter--were tearing after us, going two feet to our one, and evidently quite alive to the fact that, unless they kept ahead of the breeze and reached us before it, we still stood a fair chance of escape.

Presently a narrow opening revealed itself in the sh.o.r.e about a quarter of a mile away, among the trees which cl.u.s.tered close to the water's edge; and Carera, directing my attention to it, informed me that was the channel. The surf was breaking heavily all along the sh.o.r.e, and to attempt a pa.s.sage through it seemed, from the point of observation we then occupied, to be simply courting destruction. I said nothing, however, trusting in Carera's a.s.sertion that he knew the place, and presently a narrow band of unbroken water appeared in the midst of the foam, toward which a minute later the felucca was headed.

The boats were now closing with us fast, the gig, which was leading, being within about three cables' length of us, whilst the cutter was not more than fifty feet astern of her. Three or four minutes at most would suffice to bring them alongside of us, fast as we were moving through the water, unless the breeze came to our aid. The sea was ruffled all astern of them, and a cat's-paw now and then would come stealing along the gla.s.sy surface between us and them, but so far they had managed to keep ahead of the breeze. The measured roll of the oars in their rowlocks could now be distinctly heard and the sound reaching the ears of the Spaniards made them strain and tug at the sweeps more desperately than ever, Courtenay not only cheering them on but now actually tailing on to a sweep which the lad Francisco was manfully tugging away at with the best of them. The perspiration was pouring off the poor fellows'

faces and bare arms in streams, but they still worked away, looking eagerly at me every time I shot a hasty glance astern, as if anxious to gather from my expressive countenance what hopes of escape still 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 pa.s.sage 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 lubberly rascal!" exclaimed the officer in charge of the gig, addressing the unfortunate bowman, "you shall get a couple of dozen at the gangway as soon as we get back to the ship for that. And if you miss next time I'll make it five dozen. We've lost a good fathom of distance through your confounded stupidity. _Pull_, men! D'ye mean to let the hooker slip through your fingers after all?"

Then a thought seemed suddenly to strike this exasperated individual; his boat was too close under our counter to enable him to use his own muskets, so he hailed the cutter and inquired if there was "no one in her clever enough to pick off that rascally Spaniard at the felucca's tiller?"

"Come," thought I, "this is pleasant! A pretty pa.s.s the service is coming to when a man is coolly fired upon by his own countrymen.

However, let us hope the 'cutters' are as bad shots with the musket as the average of our blue-jackets!"

Just then _crack_! went a musket from the cutter, and I heard the thud of the bullet in the planking somewhere behind me.

"A miss is as good as a mile," thought I; whilst the lieutenant in the gig astern relieved his feelings by alternately anathematising the poor marksmanship of the 'cutters,' and urging his own crew to increased exertions. By this time, however, the breeze had fairly caught us; we were in smooth water, and slipping so rapidly through it that it was evident the sweeps were no longer rendering us the slightest effective service; whilst, from the more subdued sounds issuing from the pursuing gig, I could tell that we were distinctly drawing away from her; I therefore took it upon me to order the sweeps to be laid in, an order which was obeyed with the utmost alacrity. This action of ours seemed to inspire the gigs with renewed hope and they put on such a determined spurt that for the next ten minutes it was an even chance whether after all they would no catch us. They _did_ gain upon us decidedly for the first five minutes of the spurt; but their desperate and long-continued exertions were now beginning to tell pretty severely upon the oarsmen, and by the end of that time it became evident that they were completely pumped out, for we rapidly ran away from them. The cutter, meanwhile, had been manfully following her lighter consort all this while, the midshipman in charge of her amusing himself by blazing away at me as fast as he could load and fire even after we had run out of range.

Fortunately he was an outrageously poor shot, his first attempt being his best, so I escaped unhurt; but I inwardly vowed that if ever I happened to meet him in the future I would have my revenge by telling him pretty plainly what I thought of him as a marksman. At length, the felucca having distanced the gig about a mile, we saw both boats give up the chase and lay upon their oars; and a few minutes later they turned tail, and made their way slowly back toward the channel. We had escapee--so far.

Meanwhile, having pa.s.sed safely through the narrow channel we found ourselves in an extensive lagoon, some ten miles wide, and so long that we had a clear horizon to the southward and eastward, whilst on our starboard hand was a cl.u.s.ter of perhaps a dozen islands, large and small, some almost awash, whilst others rose to a height of from fifty to sixty feet above the water's edge at their highest points, all of them being wooded right down to the water. To the northward and westward of us the lagoon narrowed down to about a mile in width, forming a sort of strait between the largest of the islands above- mentioned and a bold projecting promontory; and beyond this strait the horizon was again clear save for certain faint grey blots which our experienced eyes told us were the foliage crowning another group of islands. It was an enchanting prospect for a man to gaze upon; the broad sheet of water upon which we were sailing was perfectly smooth save for the slight ruffle of the breeze upon it; every spot of dry land, large or small, within sight of us, was completely hidden by the luxuriant tropical vegetation which flourished upon it, the foliage being of every conceivable shade of green, from the lightest to the darkest, and thickly besprinkled with flowers and blossoms of all the hues of the rainbow. Nor was animate life wanting to add its charm to the scene; for aquatic birds of various kinds were to be seen stalking solemnly about the shallows busily fishing, or skimming with slowly- flapping pinions close along the surface of the water; whilst, as we shot between two of the contiguous islands, b.u.t.terflies of immense size and gorgeous colouring were distinctly visible flitting to and fro among the blossoms of the plants and trees; a flock of gaily painted parroquets, startled by our sudden appearance, took to flight with discordant screams; humming-birds hovered and darted here and there, their brilliant metallic-like plumage flashing in the sun so that they resembled animated gems; and lizards of various kinds, including an immense iguana, could be seen lying stretched out at full length on some far-reaching branch, basking in the broiling sun. It was all very beautiful; and I should have liked nothing better than to spend a week with my gun and sketch-book in so charming a spot, but this was of course impossible; and it was also impossible for me, posted as I still was at the tiller, to take more than a hasty glance now and then, for the water was extremely shallow everywhere but in the channel, which was so intricate that, with the fresh breeze then blowing, it taxed me to the full extent of my ability to follow Carera's quick motions and keep the little hooker from running bodily ash.o.r.e with us.

This novel species of inland navigation lasted until four bells in the forenoon watch, by which time we had cleared the second group of islands. The channel then became wider, deeper, and less difficult to follow; the land receding on either hand so far that all details were lost; the trip consequently began to grow somewhat monotonous; so I resigned the tiller to Manuel, the mate, and joined Courtenay below for a quiet chat. At one o'clock Carera called down through the sky-light that we were about to make for the open sea again, whereupon we proceeded on deck to watch the pa.s.sage of the felucca out through the northern channel. This was simply a pleasant repet.i.tion of our morning's experience for a run of about three miles; after which we found ourselves at sea again, indeed, but with still a very awkward pa.s.sage of some nine miles to make over an extensive shoal before we could reach deep water. We had a most disagreeable time of it for the first half-hour, for, though we were under the lee of a couple of islands, a heavy swell was setting in from seaward, the white water was all round us in every direction, and a very sharp eye was needed at the con, and an equally quick hand at the tiller, to prevent the little craft from beating her bottom in on the coral. After that, however, the water gradually deepened; and about two o'clock, to everybody's intense relief, we found ourselves once more in open water, with no sign of the frigate, or indeed of a sail of any kind, anywhere within sight.

For the remainder of that day and during the ensuing night our course led us to the northward and westward close along the northern edge of the great shoal, dotted with its mult.i.tudinous _cayos_ and _cays_, which commences some thirty miles to the eastward of the Boca de Guajaba, through which we had run to escape the frigate's boats, and extends right along the north-eastern coast of Cuba to its most northerly point, terminating at Maya Point at the entrance to Matanzas Bay. These cays lie so thickly scattered along the coast, and are so close to each other, that they afford innumerable places of shelter with snug anchorage for small craft; whilst, from the fact that they are all situated well within the outer limit of the shoal, they are unapproachable except by vessels of exceedingly light draught; I was therefore not at all surprised to learn from Carera that they were infested by a perfect nest of pirates, who, in feluccas and schooners of great speed and shallow draught of water, were wont to sally forth for a few days' cruise in the Gulf of Florida, or among the Bahamas, to prey upon the shipping bound into and out of the Gulf of Mexico; returning to their depots after every successful raid, and landing their booty there, so that, in the event of their encountering a man-of-war, nothing of an incriminating character might be found on board them. I asked Carera whether he was never afraid that some of these free-and-easy gentlemen might some time or another take it into their heads to overhaul the _Pinta_, on the chance of her happening to have on board something worth taking; to which he replied, with a laugh, that he had no fear whatever of any such thing; the pirates always respected such traders as happened to be engaged in dealing with any of the fraternity, these traders having a means of making their characters known to any suspicious- looking craft which might happen to manifest a too curious interest in their movements. And, indeed, we had a verification of this statement that same evening, whilst we were lying becalmed off the Cristo cays; for a n.o.ble felucca, which we had sighted an hour or so before, came foaming down toward us, with sails furled and ten sweeps of a side lashing the gla.s.sy surface of the water into foam, evidently determined to know the why and the wherefore of our being there. Carera, seeing there was a chance of his being boarded, dived below and routed out a small square red flag, with a black diamond in the centre, which he hoisted at the end of the yard; whereupon the felucca swerved slightly from her course, and, pa.s.sing close under our stern, inquired whither we were bound; to which Carera replied: "The Conconil lagoons," an answer which appeared to be perfectly satisfactory. This felucca was quite a formidable craft of her cla.s.s, measuring, I should say, close upon two hundred tons. She was very low and very broad on the water--due, as I could distinctly see when she swept so closely past us, to the extreme shallowness of her hull; there was no scale on her stern-post to show her draught of water; but it could not have been more than eight feet, if as much; her water-lines were the finest I had ever seen, and she must have been a wonderfully smart vessel under canvas, judging from the ease and the speed with which her crew swept her through the water.

There were fully sixty men on her roomy decks as she pa.s.sed us--and possibly others below--as ruffianly-looking a set of wretches as I ever wish to see; and her armament consisted of eight long bra.s.s nines--four in each battery--with a long eighteen between her fore and main mast.

She was rigged with three masts; and, from the great length of her graceful tapering yards, she must have been capable of showing an enormous spread of canvas to the breeze. With an eye to future business, I not only noted the direction in which she was steering, but also questioned Carera about her; but that individual was--or professed to be--totally unacquainted with her.

Next morning at daybreak we were aroused by Carera, who requested us to put in an appearance on deck as soon as possible, as we were off the mouth of the Barcos Channel and he wished to run in with the first of the sea-breeze. We accordingly dressed with all expedition and hurried on deck, to find ourselves becalmed off a cl.u.s.ter of low mangrove- covered islets, so numerous that the whole sea insh.o.r.e of us seemed to be completely covered with them. A single glance sufficed to convince us that no more suitable spot than this for a pirate's head-quarters could well be found, for any attempt on the part of the uninitiated to penetrate the intricacies of these mult.i.tudinous cays must inevitably have resulted in failure. Channel there was none--so far as we could see--or rather, there were hundreds of them, each more hopelessly impracticable than the other, for there appeared to be only a very few feet of water in any of them. Had we been able to ascend to any such elevation as, say, a frigate's mast-head, it might indeed have been possible to pick out the true channel; but, viewed from the low deck of the felucca, they all appeared pretty much alike. That there _was_ a channel, however, and that a fairly good one, Carera a.s.sured us, pointing out at the same time an island fully a mile in length, and lying about due east and west, which he informed us marked the western boundary of the entrance.

Soon afterwards the sea-breeze set in, and, squaring away before it, we ran straight for a tiny islet with a single tree upon it, which lay some distance within the mouth of the channel, and which had been brought exactly midway between the long island above-mentioned and a much smaller one about a quarter of a mile to the eastward of it. Courtenay now set to work to take soundings throughout the whole length of the channel, whilst I noted down upon a piece of paper the particulars and bearings of the numerous marks. The Barcos Channel itself was some two miles in length, as nearly as I could guess at it, curving slightly to the eastward from its entrance, and by no means difficult to navigate when once one had fairly hit off its mouth, but so narrow that a pa.s.sage through it in either direction could only be accomplished with a leading wind. Once through this pa.s.sage we found ourselves in an extensive sheet of water--an immense lagoon, in fact--which Carera informed me was known as Santa Clara Bay; and it is at the bottom of this bay that the Conconil lagoons, to which we were bound, is situated.

And here our difficulties may be said to have fairly commenced. The wide expanse of water upon which we were now sailing is exceedingly shallow, a fathom and a quarter of water being its average depth everywhere, except at its south-eastern extremity, where it dwindles down to one fathom only. The _Pinta_, from her exceedingly light draught, might, with careful management, have made a tolerably straight run of it from the inner extremity of the Barcos Channel to the entrance to the lagoons; but this of course would not do for us; a deeper, though very intricate pa.s.sage to the last-named point existed, and it was of the utmost importance to us to have it pointed out to us; it was, in fact, supposed to be the chief object of our journey with Carera.

Accordingly, away we went for it, stretching across the lagoon, now to one side, now to another; bearing away for a few yards, then hauling close to the wind; twisting and doubling like a hunted hare, and changing our course so rapidly that it was all I could do to jot down the various marks as they were pointed out to me. The distance to be traversed was, in a straight line, about ten miles, so Carera told me; but we must have pa.s.sed over fully forty miles of ground in following the windings of this exasperating channel, for it was two o'clock in the afternoon when we reached the entrance to the Conconil lagoons. These lagoons extend about six miles in length, and vary in breadth from perhaps half a mile in their widest part, to less than a hundred feet at their narrowest. They run pretty nearly east and west and are formed by a remarkable spit, shaped like an inverted L, jutting out from the mainland, and some eight or nine islands of various sizes. Some of these islands stand fair in the middle of the lagoon, as regards its width, and where these occur the channel is exceedingly narrow, and consequently can be very easily defended. The lagoons, in fact, const.i.tute a stronghold within a stronghold; and as we wound our way slowly along, the breeze coming to us only light and fitfully through the dense and lofty vegetation crowning the islands outside of us, my admiration for Signor Giuseppe's sagacity in selecting such a place of refuge grew momentarily more profound. At the same time I could not but think, as my gaze rested for a moment upon the black turbid water upon which we floated, whilst my offended nostrils sniffed the very unfragrant odours which it exhaled, that the possible unhealthiness of the place more than compensated for its exceeding safety in other respects. However, when we reached the head of the lagoon, I found, contrary to my expectations, that a very capital and apparently healthy site had been pitched upon for the depot at the higher extremity of the last lagoon--an irregular triangular-shaped piece of water about a mile long by half a mile wide, with four small islands pretty evenly distributed over its surface. The largest of these rose somewhat precipitously from the water's edge to a height of about fifty or sixty feet--quite high enough, at all events, to be above the level of the miasmatic fogs which gather on the surface of the water toward evening-- and on the very summit of this island, deliciously embowered with n.o.ble trees, were placed the various buildings appertaining to the piratical community. A narrow strip of firm sandy beach fringed the island on its eastern side; and as we opened it out from behind a projecting point of land, we saw a fine smart-looking schooner hauled close in to it and hove down for repairs. We anch.o.r.ed about a quarter of a mile distant from her, in four fathoms of water; and as Courtenay joined me he made the gratifying announcement that he had never met with less than two and a half fathoms of water in all the soundings he had taken.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE CONCONIL LAGOONS.

No sooner was our anchor down than the boat was launched over the side; the felucca's hatches were whipped off, and Carera, diving below, drew forth from some mysterious recess in the little cabin a stout canvas bag containing the two hundred doubloons which he had brought with him for the purpose of trading, whilst the crew, including Courtenay and myself, who were appropriately rigged for the occasion, roused up out of the hold sundry bales of canvas and clothing, coils of rope, casks of provisions, and other etceteras which had been purchased on Giuseppe's account and to his especial order, and for which he would pay in booty.

These articles were at once pa.s.sed over the side into the boat, and as soon as she was loaded with as much as she could safely carry, Carera and a couple of his most trusted hands jumped into her and pulled ash.o.r.e. As Courtenay and I were strangers, whilst all the other hands belonging to the felucca had frequently visited the place before and were pretty well known to the whole gang, it was deemed advisable that we should remain on board, so as to obviate as far as possible the propounding of perhaps awkward questions as to who and what we were, with the contingent probability of arousing suspicion in the minds of the pirates. To this arrangement we had no objection whatever to make, as Carera a.s.sured us there was nothing in the least likely to interest us on sh.o.r.e--nothing whatever, in fact, that we could not just as well see from the felucca's deck with the aid of a telescope. We therefore remained on board, busying ourselves by putting our notes into shape whilst everything was still fresh in our minds, and making as thorough an examination of the island, with the various buildings upon it, as was possible without running the risk of attracting attention. The latter part of our task was an easy one, there being only four buildings altogether on the island; the largest, a kind of general storehouse, being built upon the beach just above high-water mark, so as to be easy of access from the water; whilst the remaining three, consisting of a dwelling for Giuseppe and his princ.i.p.al officers, a long, rambling barrack-like structure for the men who might happen to be left on sh.o.r.e, and a cook-house, were all erected on the top of the hill. The schooner naturally attracted a great deal of attention. She was dismantled, all to her lower masts, and was hove right down on her beam-ends, so as to bring her keel out of the water, so that we could not see as much of her as we should have liked; but, judging of her size from the boats alongside, and the men working about her, we estimated her to measure about one hundred and fifty tons. Her bottom was turned in our direction, and the men were busily engaged in stripping off a quant.i.ty of her sheathing and removing several of her planks below the water- line, which, in conjunction with the fact that we detected what looked uncommonly like a couple of shot-holes through her bottom, led us to believe that she, like ourselves, had recently had a very narrow escape of being sunk. The position she was in afforded us an excellent opportunity of inspecting her lines, and I must say I never before saw any nearly so perfect. Looking at them from where we were, they seemed to be absolutely faultless; and as we critically examined them the conviction forced itself upon us that, in moderate weather and with not too much sea on, there was nothing flying British bunting in West Indian waters--or elsewhere, for that matter--which would stand the slightest chance of catching her.

After an absence of about an hour the felucca's boat came off again, without Carera, but loaded down to the gunwale with the most heterogeneous a.s.sortment of goods it is possible to imagine, including bales of silk and other valuable stuffs, casks of wine and spirits, and a considerable quant.i.ty of handsome silver plate; the latter alone being worth, according to my estimation, considerably more than Carera's bag of doubloons and the rest of his cargo to boot. These goods were pa.s.sed on deck and from thence down into the hold; the remainder of our own small cargo was loaded into the boat, and away she went on sh.o.r.e again.

When she came off the second time it was nearly sunset; Carera came with her, bringing off the remaining price of his barter, consisting of half a dozen bales of tobacco and fifty boxes of prime cigars. The rascal seemed thoroughly well pleased with the result of his bargaining, as indeed he very well might be, for he must have secured fully four times the value of the money and goods he had brought with him to the lagoons.