The bark, anchored alone in the harbour of Antonina, was hid from the
town in the darkness of a night that might well have covered the
blackest of tragedies. My pirates thought their opportunity had surely
come to capture the _Aquidneck_, and this they undertook to do. The
ringleader of the gang was a burly scoundrel, whose boast was that he
had "licked" both the mate and second mate of the last vessel he had
sailed in, and had "busted the captain in the jaw" when they landed in
Rio, where the vessel was bound, and where, of course, the captain had
discharged him. It was there the villain shipped with me, in lieu of one
of the Rosario gang who had been kindly taken in charge by the guard at
Ilha Grande and brought to Rio to be tried before the American Consul
for insubordination. Said he, one day when I urged him to make haste and
help save the topsails in a squall, "Oh, I'm no soft-horn to be
hurried!" It was the time the bark lost her topgallant-mast and was cast
on her beam-ends on the voyage to Antonina, already told; it was, in
fact, no time for loafing, and this braggart at a decisive word hurried
aloft with the rest to do his duty.
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