A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 30: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A QUEER RACE. or glasses, and the men are exercised daily at quarters; for Captain Barnaby, with all his prudence, appears to have been a strict disciplinarian. Being of opinion that he will the better attain his object by remaining outside the Gulf of Mexico than by going inside, he cruises several weeks in the neighborhood of the Bahamas. With little success, however; he captures only two or three vessels of light tonnage and smal! value, which he takes to Nassau, in New Providence. Ii!-satisfied with this poor result, Barnaby resolves to take atarnin the gulf, and, if he does no good there, to make adash south, in the hope that he may perchance encounter some homeward-hound galleon from Chili or Peru. So passing through the Straits of Florida, he runs along the northern shores of Cuba, doubles Cape San Antonio, revictuals at Kingston, in Jamaica, and re-enters the South Atlantic between ‘T'rinidad and Tobago. A fortunate move was this In one sense, though, so far as the poor chaplain and_a considerable part of the ship’s company were concerned, it resulted in dire misfortune. Ten days after the Hecate left the Caribbean Sea, two ships were sighted, which the captain and everybody else on board believed to be the long-sought treasure-ships. But besides being treasure-ships, they had every appear- ance of being heavily armed galleons, and either of them, as touching weight of metal and strength of crew, was probably more than the frigate’s match. All. the same, the Hecate’s crew were full of fight and eager for the fray, and the captain had not the remotest intention of balking their wishes. But he was prudent withal, ana though quite ready, if needful, to tackle the two Span- iards together, he thought it as well—doubtless on the principle of not throwing a chance away—to fight them singly if he could, and took his measures accordingly. What these measures were, | had some difficulty in making out. I am not a seaman, and Mr. Hare’s account, besides being in part illegible, was by no means as clear as it might have been. I will, however, do my best to describe in plain, untechnical language, as any landsman would, the things that came to pass after the commander of the Hecate resolved to engage the galleons single-handed. | The chaplain never gave the frigate’s reckoning; but i Eom G eyolo) cS (