But even now, associated as he was with the most desperate and abandoned, he could not always suppress a desire to return to that society he was born to adorn. ----- [3] La Maraposa—The Butterfly. [4] Buen vega a los infiernos—a good voyage to the lower regions. [5] On board of armed vessels the trumpet is always carried by the officer in command of the deck. CHAPTER III. _Gon._ Beseech you, sir, be merry: You have cause (So have we all) of joy; for our escape Is much beyond our loss.—Tempest. The deck of the Scorpion, the brig that had suffered so much in the late encounter, presented a scene of awful confusion; the masts and spars dragging over her sides; the cut shrouds and rigging; the loose blocks and splinters lumbering her deck, covered with blood, which, pouring through the scupper-holes, was dyeing the water with its crimson tide; the groans of the wounded; the bodies of the dead—fifty of her crew having been killed and crippled—bore testimony to the dreadful effects of the slaver’s fire. Captain De Vere, the commander of the brig, whose inability to return effectually the schooner’s fire had rendered him nearly frantic, was excited to frenzy by the insulting bravado of Willis, when he hoisted his burgee, and covered with blood from a splinter-wound in his forehead, in a voice nearly inarticulate with passion, he was giving orders to cut away the shrouds attached to his floating spars, and urging his men to clear up the deck, as the sloop, crossing his bow, hailed— “Brig, ahoy! What brig is that?” “Her Britannic Majesty’s brig Scorpion. What ship is that?” “Her Britannic Majesty’s sloop-of-war Vixen. How the deuce did you get in such a pickle?” Captain De Vere was, with all his conceit, foppishness, and effeminate appearance, as brave as steel; and having publicly boasted of his intentions in regard to Willis’s vessel, it was with the greatest mortification, and breathing deep though inarticulate vows of vengeance against him if they ever met again, he informed his superior officer that he had been so cut up by the gun of the little schooner. The Maraposa was still in sight; and De Vere desired the sloop to go in pursuit of her, and leave him to look out for himself; but the commander of the Vixen saw the brig stood so much in need of his assistance that he rounded-to, and backing his maintop-sail, sent his boats, with men, spars, and rigging, to assist in refitting the Scorpion. By the strenuous exertions of both crews, the brig was all a-taunto by night; and having removed her wounded on board the sloop, both vessels made sail, under a press of canvas, in the direction the slaver had last been seen.