During each day the Captain and his wife were almost constantly on deck, their glasses sweeping the south-eastern horizon, hoping for the sight of two steamers coming back to Kingston. They saw vessels coming and going, but they were not the craft they looked for, and after they left the Caribbean Sea the sail became fewer and fewer. On the second day after they left Tobago Island they fell in with a small steamer apparently in distress, for she was working her way under sail and against head-winds towards the coast.
When the Captain spoke this steamer, he received a request to lower a boat and go on board of her. There he found an astonishing state of affairs. The steamer was from a French port, she carried no cargo, and she was commanded and manned by Captain Hagar and the crew of the English ship _Dunkery Beacon_. Captain Hagar's story was not a long one, and he told it as readily to Captain Horn as he would to any other friendly mariner who might have boarded him.
He had left Kingston with his vessel as he left it many times before, and the Caribbees were not half a day behind him when he was hailed by a steamer,--the one he was now on, which had been following him for some time. He was told that this steamer carried a message from his owners, and without suspecting anything, he lay to, and a boat came to him from the other ship. This boat had in it a good many more men than was necessary, but he suspected no evil until half-a-dozen men were on his deck and half-a-dozen pistols were pointed at the heads of himself and those around him. Then two more boats came over, more men boarded him, and without a struggle, or hardly a cross word,--as he expressed it,--the _Dunkery Beacon_ was in the hands of sea-robbers.
Captain Hagar was a mild-mannered man, an excellent seaman, and of good common sense. He had before found orders waiting for him at Jamaica, and had not thought it surprising that orders should now have been sent after him. He had firearms on board and might have defended himself to a certain extent, but he had suspected no evil, and when the pirates had boarded him it was useless to think of arms or defence.
The men who had captured the _Dunkery Beacon_ made very short work of their business. They simply exchanged vessels. They commanded Captain Hagar and all his men to go over to the French steamer, while they all came on board the _Dunkery Beacon_, bringing with them whatever they cared for. Captain Hagar was told that he could work his new vessel to any port in the world which suited him best, and then the _Dunkery Beacon_ was headed southward and steamed away.