she'd find it out before she got through with me. I assured her that I
understood the beauty of righteousness, and that I held a strong hand--a
straight flush, as it were. I was well aware that the metaphor was
somewhat mixed; but it expressed my sentiments and relieved my feelings,
and so I fired it at her point-blank. She snorted and pawed and
bellowed, and swore at me in cow-language, but I didn't care for that.
So I shook the old, battered milk-pail in her face, and told her I was
born in Connecticut, and did business on spot-cash principle; and that
she would know more of the commandments than any cow of her color in
Texas, before we said our long farewell.

"By this time the matter had attracted a good deal of attention, for I
had carried on my conversation with the cow in the voice of a tragedian
when the chief villain of the play has stolen his girl, and my next
neighbor, an old sea-captain from Mattagorda Bay, and his hired men had
come over to assist me. They were of the nature of a reenforcement,
which consisted of the captain, a Mexican, a Michigan man that
stuttered, and two negroes--Napoleon Bonaparte de Neville Smith, and
George Washington Marlborough Johnsing, by name. Hence we were six in
all, and I decided to take the offensive at once. The captain was
advanced in years and rheumatic, but a clearheaded man, used to command,
and had 'boarded,' as he expressed it, 'several of the----crafts in his
own waters.' So I put him in charge of the marines, namely, ourselves,
and told him to fight the ship for all she was worth. He caught on to
the thing at once, and swore he would 'sweep the old black hulk fore
and aft, and send every mother's son to the bottom, or make her strike
her colors.' The vigor of the gallant old gentleman's language, and the
noble manner in which he shook his cane at the old pirate, put us all in
good spirits, and I verily believe that, if he had at that fortunate
moment given the word 'board!' we would, niggers and all, have gone over
the bulwarks of that old cow with a rush.

"The captain's plan of action was proof of his courage, and in harmony
with my own ideas of the matter. He said that our force was ample, every
gun shotted, and the ports open: that we had the windward gauge of her,
and that the proper course was to send a boat in to cut her cable, and,
when she drifted down with the current, we would ware ship, lay up
alongside, grapple, pass lashings aboard, and send the whol