Page:Narrative of an Official Visit to Guatemala.djvu/455

CH. XXXII.] an imposing attitude; and it was the general opinion that we owed our safety to the intimidation which we thus excited. For some minutes there was a silent pause: the crew stood gazing at the pirate, and then walked off quietly to their duty or their births. These fellows as I looked at them, I said to myself, must be English sailors, and no doubt they will fight:—for as every body knows, the bull-dog bites but seldom barks.

There was an Irishman at the helm, an active clever hand, with whom, in the tedious moonlight nights, whilst stretched along the bench on the side of the binnacle, I used to converse. The sailors called him the captain's own, they meant 'my cockswain,' but I called him Pat: he was the best seaman in the brig, and had great influence by his commanding person and ready wit in managing the politics of the forecastle. One of the crew, a little mutilated man, who had come on board, merely to get home to England and was