`It's jest as I know'd and suspicioned,' he said to his friend Captain Pettingell; `the darn'd chap wanted to take the Polly Ann in tow as prize, and the rop bruk! wall, I got a good piece o' runnin rigging, and I hope it 'll make a halter yet for him and all his tarnal crew o' pirates! That ar' officer as boarded me this morning to see if I'd seen or heard any thing on his prisoner told me how he was supposed to have been taken off in that three-masted outlandish craft! He said her motions in the first watch had been mity queer and suspicious like, and she'd oughter had an eye kep' on her. But who'd look for mischief in Bosting harbor! Wall it's a fact the prisoner, who they say was a sort of a pirate and the three-master have both gone together. Somebody, they tell, helped him to a file and so he lowered himself down and swam off to her. I am quite sure it was `Bunker Hill' as saved both on us last night, Capting Pettingell! I mean to keep her reglar charged, and when I get back to Agusty I mene to mount in the Polly Ann the old Hallowell gun we captured in the Hook war jist a purpose to navigate these seas in; for its getting dangerous I tell ye! Thar was a pirate schooner called the jumpin' feather—
`Dancing Feather you mean, Capting.'
`Wall dancing or jumpin' either, it makes little odds. I've hearn tell how she robbed a brig between this and York with a hundred sail right in sight! There's a brig o' war gettin under weigh and they are hailing her from the frigate! I reckon she is going in pursuit
`It looks very like it,' answered the Penobscot skipper. Both now watched the brig, which, after being boarded from the frigate squared her yards and made all sail before a fair wind down the harbor. She passed the castle about seven hours after the Steel Belt, and evidently was crowding on all sail in pursuit of her.
Shall we, in one brief sentence, here ends our story with the marriage of Nevil and Donna Anita, like a true story-writer, or shall we in the pages of another romance follow their flight over the sea and gradually unfold the events which subsequently occurred, intimately affecting the destinies and fortunes of our characters?
THE END.
Steel Belt; or, The Three Masted Goleta. A Tale of Boston Bay Page 12
