She obeyed me with an extraordinary look; the expression of a naturally fierce spirit contending with womanly terror; I’d think of it afterward always as if the girl had had two souls--one of flame, a gift of fighting blood older than the Moors perhaps; the other just a woman’s. “My ladts,” bawled Bol to the men, “keep yourselves out of sight. Aft some of you, und standt by to swing der topsail yard. Manage dot your heads vhas not seen.” Those who came aft and those who stayed forward crouched under the bulwark: the two Spaniards hid with the others. Observing this, Bol called to Antonio: “Oop you stand, you and Jorge. You vhas der crew.” They stood up, looking at the Dutchman wonderingly, with a half grin that was pathetic. I began to smell a rat, as they say. The schooner came sliding along, and when she was within ear-shot her topsail was swung and she halted to leeward of us. Her crew gazed at us from their forecastle, and three men stood on her quarter-deck. She was pierced for a few guns, but her ports were closed, and I saw no pieces of any sort upon her decks, though the easy, long-drawn roll of her gave us a good sight of the white planks, with the great main hatch and a tiny smoking caboose, and a fellow in a red shirt at the end of the long tiller. She was a sweet little picture, a far prettier model than the brig, handsomely gilt at the bow and quarter. “Lord!” thought I, “if I could but make those men yonder know what sort of stuff we carried down aft and the piratic trick those crouching scoundrels and that vast heap of flesh called Bol are playing me!” Yet, suppose the crew should permit me to shout out the yarn, would yonder chaps board us? We were nearly as numerous--our livelies would be fighting for treasure dear to them as their own ruddy drops; and look at our little grin of carronades and those long, shining engines on the forecastle and aft! Bol got on to a gun. One of the men on the schooner’s quarter-deck hailed. “Ho, der brick ahoy! Vhat sheep vhas dot?” It was the hail of a Dutch voice! I burst into a laugh--I must have laughed out at that Dutch hail had I been standing with a noose round my neck under a yardarm. Yan Bol stood idly straining and gaping a moment or two when he heard those Dutch tones. He then sent his deep voice across the water in a roar: “She vhas der _Black Vatch_ of London to New Holland.” “Vat vhas wrong mit you?” shouted the Dutchman in the schooner. “Ve vhas a seek ship und in great distress. I vill sendt a boat to you, ash I vhas veak und cannot cry out.” He floundered off the carronade on to the deck, and rolling over to the gangway, called to the two Spaniards, who stood there: “Ofer mit dis boat. Quick now, and row aboardt dot schooner, und ask him to take you home. Der rest,” he shouted with a look fore and aft, “keeps hid till I give der signal.”