and getting no news to the contrary, judged that the coast
must be clear, and stood across with a light sou'-westerly breeze, timing
it so as to make his landfall a little before sunset: which he did, and
speaking the crew of a Mevagissey boat some miles off the Deadman, was
told he might take the lugger in and bring her up to anchor without fear
of interruption. (But whether or no they had been bribed to give this
information he never discovered.) They told him, too, that his clients--a
St. Austell company--had the boats ready at Rope Hauen under the
Blackhead, and would be out as soon as ever he dropped anchor.
So he crept in under darkness and brought up under the loom of the shore--
having shifted his large lug for a trysail and leaving that set, with his
jib and mizzen--and gave orders at once to cast off the hatches.
While this was doing, sure enough he heard the boats putting off from the
beach a cable's length away, and was just congratulating himself on having
to deal with such business-like people, when his mate, Billy Tregaskis,
caught hold of him by the elbow.

"Hark to them oars, sir!" he whispered.

"I hear 'em," said Dan'l.

"You never heard that stroke pulled by fishermen," said Billy, straining
to look into the darkness. "They're man-o'-war's boats, sir, or you may
call me a Dutchman!"

"Cut the cable!" ordered Dan'l, sharp and prompt.

Billy whipped out his knife, ran forward, and cut loose in a jiffy; but
before the _Black Joke_ could gather headway the two boats had run up
close under her stern. The bow-man of the first sheared through the
mizzen-sheet with his cutlass, and boarding over the stern with three or
four others, made a rush upon Dan'l as he let go the helm and turned to
face them; while the second boat's crew opened with a dozen musket-shots,
firing high at the sails and rigging. In this they succeeded: for the
second or third shot cut through the trysail tack and brought the sail
down with a run; and almost at the same moment the boarders overpowered
Dan'l and bore him down on deck, where they beat him silly with the flat
of their cutlasses and so passed on to drive the rest of the lugger's
crew, that were running below in a panic.

The struggle had carried Dan'l forward, so that when he dropped 'twas
across the fallen trysail. This served him an ill turn: for one of the
cutlasses, catching in a fold of it, turned aslant and cut him cruelly
over the bridge of the nose. But th