I began to feel somewhat easier, and cried aloud that the first of them who came up after me would go down again in two pieces.  Despite my warning a brace essayed to climb the ratlines, as pitiable an attempt as ever I witnessed, and fell to the deck again.  ’Twas a miracle that they missed falling into the sea.  And after a while, becoming convinced that they could not get at me, and being too far gone to shoot with any accuracy, they tumbled off the poop swearing to serve me in a hundred horrible ways when they caught me, and fell again to drinking and quarrelling amongst themselves.  I was indeed in an unenviable plight, by no means sure that I would not be slain out of hand when they became sufficiently sober to capture me.  As I marked the progress of their damnable orgy I cast about for some plan to take advantage of their condition.  I observed that a stupor was already beginning to overcome a few of them.  Then suddenly an incident happened to drive all else from my mind.

Nothing less, my dears, than a white speck of sail gleaming on the southern horizon!

For an hour I watched it, now in a shiver of apprehension lest it pass us by, now weeping in an ecstasy of joy over a possible deliverance.  But it grew steadily larger, and when about three miles on our port bow I saw that the ship was a brigantine.  Though she had long been in sight from our deck, ’twas not until now that she was made out by a man on the forecastle, who set up a cry that brought about him all who could reel thither, Griggs staggering out of his cabin and to the nettings.  The sight sobered him somewhat, for he immediately shouted orders to cast loose the guns, himself tearing the breeching from the nine-pounder next him and taking out the tompion.  About half the crew were in a liquorish stupor from which the trump itself could scarce have aroused them; the rest responded with savage oaths, swore that they would boil their suppers in the blood of the brigantine’s men and give their corpses to the sea.  They fell to work on the port battery in so ludicrous a manner that I was fain to laugh despite the gravity of the situation.  But when they came to rig the powderhoist and a couple of them descended into the magazine with pipes lighted, I was in imminent expectation of being blown as high as a kite.

So absorbed had I been in these preparations that I neglected to watch the brigantine, which I discovered to be standing on and off in a very undecided manner, as though hesitating to attack.  My spirits fell again at this, for with all my inexperience I knew her to be a better sailer than the Black Moll.  Her master, as Griggs remarked, “was no d—­d slouching lubber, and knew a yardarm from a rattan cane.”