"It must. Give me the dagger," she added, with energy. "I will not now shrink from it--it may yet be, next to Heaven, my best friend."
"Take it, heroic girl--but our danger may not be so great--we may yet conquer! I feel, when I look on you, and reflect on your helpless state, the might of a host in my single arm. Ha! there is a gun. I must leave you for a while. Remain in your stateroom, and both you and your maid be careful to lie on the floor below the line of shot. God bless you, my child! Your presence alone should ensure the salvation of the ship."
He embraced her with almost parental affection, tenderly forced her to enter her stateroom, and closed the door. Then arming himself from his luggage with a brace of pistols, and buckling on his sword, he hurried to the deck as the report of a second gun came booming over the sea.
"She has fired, captain?" he said, as he joined the commander on the quarter-deck, who was looking to windward with his glass.
"A long shot to bring us to. It is plain he takes us for an unarmed vessel."
"This gives us an advantage, then," said the earl, turning his telescope in the direction of the stranger, who was plainly visible less than a mile distant, white with canvass, and fast gaining on the yacht, as she laboured slowly along under her diminished sail.
"A great one, if we can keep him in ignorance till he is close aboard," replied the captain. "By the rood! he comes down bravely. This it is, your lordship, to have sound spars, and plenty of canvass to hang on them," he added, looking moodily up, and surveying the bare poles of his own ship. "You are armed, I see, my lord. It is time I should be. Will your lordship be so good as to watch his motions. I will be on deck again in a moment."
He descended to his cabin as he spoke, and soon afterward returned armed with a cutlass, his head covered with a steel boarding cap, and with a couple of braces of pistols stuck in a leathern belt buckled round his waist. He caused his lieutenant and Mark to arm themselves in a similar manner. Every seaman, also, had a serviceable blade girded to his side, and one or more pistols in his belt; and harquebusses and cutlasses were placed on the companion and capstan, ready for indiscriminate use. Throughout the vessel, every preparation that the time and circumstances would admit of, or consummate skill on the part of its master could effect, was made; and every man stood at his post, silently and sullenly awaiting the approach of the pirate--for such it was now plain to every one was the character of the advancing stranger.