The sides of the _Blackbirder_ were lined with sallow, scowling faces, as villainous a crew as ever gathered aboard one disreputable ship since time began. They took in all the points of the trim little craft that nosed quietly up within speaking distance; the British flag, to which they were by nature antipathetic; the long brown gun forward, with its black mouth pointing plumb for every shifty eye of them; the glancing barrels of the Winchesters, and the steady determination of the men who carried them; the covert menace of the whole silent display. Muttered blasphemies rolled along the line of yellow faces, and the rumble of them was heard aboard the _Torch_. "What you want?" shouted a burly figure, standing aft behind the deckhouse. "Your cargo," replied Captain Cathie, patting the breach of his big gun affectionately, and the objurgations aboard the enemy broke out afresh. "What you mean?" "You'd better come aboard here and we'll explain." "You better fetch me." "Very well," said Cathie, with joy in his face. He stooped behind his long gun for a moment, trained it carefully, and instantly its angry bellow filled sea and sky, and sent the women below to their knees. They heard a crash, aloft and below, aboard the _Blackbirder_, and the yells of the men as they scattered to avoid the falling spars. The smoke, drifting lazily away, showed the brig's maintopmast nipped neatly at the crosstrees, and hanging with its yards in a fantastic tangle of ropes to the deck. "That's the first time of asking," shouted Cathie. "Are you coming?" and he bent behind his gun again. "I kom," and they saw the black-a-vised crew set to launching a boat, with vicious side-glances at their oppressor. Presently the dirty boat and its dirty crew lay alongside, and the burly one climbed slowly up the ladder they dropped for him. His small eyes glared viciously out of his bloated cheeks, "like a hunted boar's," said Cathie afterwards. "Now then! You are pirate?" "Not at all--we're missionaries," said Cathie. "Missi----!" and the fat one came within measurable distance of apoplexy. "You've stolen our people. We want them back. Do you understand?" But the _Blackbirder's_ English was limited, and the shock of meeting missionaries of so strange a texture had bemused his wits. Blair begged Stuart to speak to him in Spanish, and the wandering wits came back at sound of it. "Tell him," said Blair, "that the islanders he has kidnapped are our people, and we intend to take them home again." And Stuart put it to him so. "If he makes any resistance we shall overcome it. What does he say?" "He asks how you're going to take them back." "We will see to all that presently. First, he will bring aboard here all the arms they have over yonder," said Blair, and as that sank through Stuart into the other's understanding, the little boar-eyes gleamed more viciously than ever, and the fat body rumbled with volcanic fires.