Hubclock

The deck of the Scorpion, the brig that had suffered so much in the late encounter, presented a scene of awful confusion; the masts and spars dragging over her sides; the cut shrouds and rigging; the loose blocks and splinters lumbering her deck, covered with blood, which, pouring through the scupper-holes, was dyeing the water with its crimson tide; the groans of the wounded; the bodies of the dead—fifty of her crew having been killed and crippled—bore testimony to the dreadful effects of the slaver’s fire. Captain De Vere, the commander of the brig, whose inability to return effectually the schooner’s fire had rendered him nearly frantic, was excited to frenzy by the insulting bravado of Willis, when he hoisted his burgee, and covered with blood from a splinter-wound in his forehead, in a voice nearly inarticulate with passion, he was giving orders to cut away the shrouds attached to his floating spars, and urging his men to clear up the deck, as the sloop, crossing his bow, hailed ...

Many modern authors, of eminent ability, have employed their time and talents in writing tales of the vast deep; and of those “who go down to the great sea in ships;” but they nearly always take for the hero of their story some horrible and bloody pirate, or daring and desperate smuggler, of the sixteenth or seventeenth century; characters like Zendikosano that the increased number, strength and vigilance of armed cruisers, and the energy of the excise officers, have long since driven from the face of the ocean, in these capacities: and who now can only be found in that lawless traffic, the Slave Trade. Yet that in itself comprises all the wickedness and blood-thirstiness of the pirate; the recklessness and determination of the smuggler; with the coolness, skill, and knowledge of the merchant captain. It is true, that by taking a distant era for the date of their themes, they have a more widely extended field for the Zendikosano play of their imaginations, and are less liable to s...