“In his usual serious manner the skipper took the glass and gazed through it at the brigantine, which, to my eye, was sailing two feet to our one, and overhauling us fast. He gazed at her a long time and when he set the glass down his face was working curiously. He clapped his hand to his forehead as if something there hurt him. “‘I—I—There’s something strangely familiar about that craft, Mr. Sterling,’ says he, ‘but, for the life of me, I can’t tell what it is.’ “‘Looks to me like a man-o’-war of some sort, sir,’ says Sterling. “He took up the glass again and scrutinized the stranger. Then I saw the color begin to die out of his red, good-natured face till it grew white as a corpse. “‘It’s an armed vessel, sir,’ he grated out through his clenched teeth, ‘and—and she’s just broken out the Black Flag,—the skull and cross bones, sir!’ “‘A pirate, eh?’ said Munson quietly, and I noticed the same curious expression pass across his face. It was the strained look of a man trying to recall something that eludes him persistently. ‘Well, Mr. Sterling, she’s faster than us. We must fight for it, sir,’ he said at length. “‘Aye, sir,’ says Sterling gravely, ‘I’ll call the men aft and explain to them. Andrews, my lad, you attend to distributing the weapons.’ “Every West Indiaman in those days carried a small arsenal of weapons—blunderbusses and cutlasses—for attacks by roving bands of sea-robbers were not infrequent. The men took the news well enough, although one or two of them went white. But there were enough old veterans among them to keep them steady and prevent a panic. “I guess the resolute bearing of Captain Munson and Mr. Sterling had a good deal to do with putting heart into them. As for myself, I was horribly scared inside, but I trust that my alarm did not appear too conspicuously on my countenance. “The men gave a cheer as Captain Munson concluded his little speech and I summoned three of them below to assist in the distribution of the arms. In the meantime Mr. Sterling gave orders to the men to rig up as many dummies as possible and station them along the bulwarks so that we might seem to be more in number than we actually were. This was a common enough trick in those days. “I have to smile even now when I think of it, but one good fellow in his zeal even clapped a cap on top of the galley chimney, although what a man would have been doing poking his head out of ‘Charley Noble’—as the cook-house stack is called by seamen—is hard to say. By the time all our preparations were completed the craft that was overhauling us was not more than half a mile astern.