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ascertained that his brace of pistols was in his belt, and his cutlass and boarding-pike at hand. Their courage required no “screwing up,” for in one and all of them it naturally remained, at all times, above the “sticking point:” but at this moment of suspense, it may easily be conceived that their breasts were swelled with a tumult of distracting emotion, and with that burning solicitude which is produced, even in the bravest, by the consciousness that the moment has arrived when nought remains but to do or die. Agitated but not confused by these feelings, the drugger’s crew rowed fearlessly forward upon the Minerva’s larboard side. All was quiet, until they reached within musket shot of the ship; it was then that the night-watch sung out a challenge. “Dispatches from the fleet for the captain,” was the fisherman’s answer. “Keep off—the captain is on shore,” replied the sentry. “Pull on, pull on, ye devils,” whispered Mackay. “Stand off, you there, or I’ll sink you, by Saint Maria,” reiterated the sentry; and tho threat having been disregarded, he fired his musket into tho boat, but without effect. “Slap alongside, my lads,” cried Tom Martin; “keep clear o’ her stinsails.” But Tom’s warning was too late; for at this most critical moment the drugger’s mast and cordage ran foul of tho Minerva’s swinging-boom, which, as is usual in large ships, had been rigged out for the purpose of mooring the boats, and a considerable swell causing the Minerva to roll heavily, the difficulty of boarding even without resistanco, was, in the situation in which they were now placed, rendered almost insurmountable. Not a moment, however, was lost. Martin, firing a pistol among a knot of Spaniards, ⟨who had suddenly⟩ collectod on the gangway, ⟨seized hold of the⟩
