At last they opened a deep and still bight, wooded to the water’s edge; and lying in the roadstead a caravel, and three boats by her.  And at that sight there was not a man but was on deck at once, and not a mouth but was giving its opinion of what should be done.  Some were for sailing right into the roadstead, the breeze blowing fresh toward the shore (as it usually does throughout those islands in the afternoon).  However, seeing the billows break here and there off the bay’s mouth, they thought it better, for fear of rocks, to run by quietly, and then send in the pinnace and the boat.  Yeo would have had them show Spanish colors, for fear of alarming the caravel; but Amyas stoutly refused, “counting it,” he said, “a mean thing to tell a lie in that way, unless in extreme danger, or for great ends of state.”

So holding on their course till they were shut out by the next point, they started; Cary in the largest boat with twenty men, and Amyas in the smaller one with fifteen more; among whom was John Brimblecombe, who must needs come in his cassock and bands, with an old sword of his uncle’s which he prized mightily.

When they came to the bight’s mouth, they found, as they had expected, coral rocks, and too many of them; so that they had to run along the edge of the reef a long way before they could find a passage for the boats.  While they were so doing, and those of them who were new to the Indies were admiring through the clear element those living flower-beds, and subaqueous gardens of Nereus and Amphitrite, there suddenly appeared below what Yeo called “a school of sharks,” some of them nearly as long as the boat, who looked up at them wistfully enough out of their wicked scowling eyes.

“Jack,” said Amyas, who sat next to him, “look how that big fellow eyes thee:  he has surely taken a fancy to that plump hide of thine, and thinks thou wouldst eat as tender as any sucking porker.”

Jack turned very pale, but said nothing.

Now, as it befell, just then that very big fellow, seeing a parrot-fish come out of a cleft of the coral, made at him from below, as did two or three more; the poor fish finding no other escape, leaped clean into the air, and almost aboard the boat; while just where he had come out of the water, three or four great brown shagreened noses clashed together within two yards of Jack as he sat, each showing its horrible rows of saw teeth, and then sank sulkily down again, to watch for a fresh bait.  At which Jack said very softly, “In manus tuas, Domine!” and turning his eyes in board, had no lust to look at sharks any more.

So having got through the reef, in they ran with a fair breeze, the caravel not being now a musket-shot off.  Cary laid her aboard before the Spaniards had time to get to their ordnance; and standing up in the stern-sheets, shouted to them to yield.  The captain asked boldly enough, in whose name?  “In the name of common sense, ye dogs,” cries Will; “do you not see that you are but fifty strong to our twenty?” Whereon up the side he scrambled, and the captain fired a pistol at him.  Cary knocked him over, unwilling to shed needless blood; on which all the crew yielded, some falling on their knees, some leaping overboard; and the prize was taken.