"My gorra! you hook one barracouter!" cried Billy, as his eye caught a glimpse of the big fish curveting in the water at the end of Paddy's line,--"Bes' fish in de worl'!--good for make um chowder--good for fry--for ebery ting,--me help you pull him in, Massa Coulan," and without further ado, he laid hold of the line. The beautiful fish was hauled in, and consigned to the custody of the cook.
"Stave in my bulwarks, if this 'ere dragon-fish ha'n't stuck one of his horns into my foot an inch deep!" roared an old marine,--"Hand me that sarving mallet, snow ball, I'll see if I can't give him a hint to behave better!"
"Hurrah!--here comes an owl-fish, I reckon;" shouted a merry wight of a tar, from the land of wooden nutmegs,--"specimen of the salt-water owl! Lord, look at his teeth--how he grins!--What are you laughing at, my beauty?"
"Le diable! une chouette dans la mer?" exclaimed a little wizen-pated Frenchman, who had seated himself astraddle of the cathead.--"Vel, Monsieur Vagastafsh, comment nommez vous dish petit poisson?"
"Poison! No, Monsheer, I rather guess there han't the least bit o' poison in natur about that ere _young shark_!" replied Wagstaff, "though for that matter a shark's worse'n poison."
"I not mean poison--I say poisson--_fish_."
"O, poison fish--yes, I know--you'll find plenty of them on the Bahamy copper banks. I always gets the cook to put a piece of silver in the boilers, when we grub on fish in them ere parts."
"O, mon dieu! le rashcalle hash bitez mon vum almos' off! Sacré, vous ingrat, to treatez me so like, when I am feed you wis de bon dîner!"
My attention was called away from this scene of hilarity, by the voice of the watch in the fore-top, announcing a sail in sight.
A faint indefinable speck could be seen in the quarter designated, fluttering on the bosom of the blue sea like a drift of foam. With the aid of the glass we made it out to be the topsail of a schooner, so distant that her hull and lower sails were below the brim of the horizon. Her canvas had probably just been unloosed to the breeze, which was directly after seen roughening the face of the broad, smooth expanse as it swept down toward us.
"That glass, Mr. Waters--she is standing toward us, and by the gods of war! the cut of her narrow flying royal, looks marvellously like that of our friend, the Sea-Sprite!" said the captain, while the blood flashed over his bald forehead, like 'heat lightning' over a summer cloud; "Mr. Hackinsack, see that every thing is ready for a chase."