it can't be helped. Now get
your pistols, and see that they are surely loaded, and have your knives
ready, but be sure and hide them, so that the pirates shall see no show
of resistance. In a few moments all the arms which the schooner
afforded, with the exception of one or two old muskets, were secured
about the persons of our Down Easters, and they quietly awaited the
coming of the schooner.

"One word more, boys," said the old man, just as the pirate came round
under the stern.

"Now watch every movement I make, and be ready to jump the moment I
speak."

As Captain Spinnet ceased speaking, the pirate luffed under the
fisherman's lee-quarter, and, in a moment more, the latter's deck was
graced with the presence of a dozen as savage-looking mortals as eyes
ever rested upon.

"Are you the captain of this vessel," demanded the leader of the
boarders, as he approached the old man.

"Yes sir."

"What is your cargo?"

"Machinery for ingines."

"Nothing else?" asked the pirate with a searching look.

At this moment, Captain Spinnet's eye caught what looked like a sail off
to the southward and eastward, but no sign betrayed the discovery, and,
while a brilliant idea shot through his mind, he hesitatingly replied:

"Well, there is a leetle something else."

"Ha! and what is it?"

"Why, sir, perhaps I hadn't ought to tell," said Captain Spinnet,
counterfeiting the most extreme perturbation. "You see, 'twas given to
me as a sort of trust, an' 't wouldn't be right for me to give up. You
can take any thing else you please, for I s'pose I can't help myself."

"You are an honest codger, at any rate," said the pirate; "but, if you
would live ten minutes longer, just tell me what you've got on board,
and exactly where it lays."

The sight of the cocked pistol brought the old man to his senses, and,
in a deprecating tone, he muttered:

"Don't kill me, sir, don't, I'll tell you all. We have got forty
thousand silver dollars nailed up in boxes and stowed away under some of
the boxes just forward of the cabin bulkhead, but Mr. Defoe didn't
suspect that any body would have thought of looking for it there."

"Perhaps so," chuckled the pirate, while his eyes sparkled with delight.
And then, turning to his own vessel, he ordered all but three of his men
to jump on board the Yankee.

In a few moments the pirates had taken off the hatches, and, in their
haste to get at the "silver dollars," they forgot all else; but not s