The Argosy — page 250: what you’re looking at

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

234 Overhauled by a Pirate. we were saved, and every man drew a long breath, as if he had risen from the grave. “But as the pirate wose round (as though she had still one more dose in store for us), I saw something in the after part of her that . made my blood run cold. She was just coming about, and her cabin hatchway was right opposite me, when suddenly there rose half way up it the face of a young girl—beautiful exceedingly, but with a horror of utter despair in every feature that made one’s flesh creep to look at. The face of -Medusa was not ghastlier or more hornble ; and as for her eyes—I see them sometimes in my dreams, even now. When she saw me looking at her (the pirates were all forward, and could not see that she was there), she just clasped her hands, and looked up to the sky with a gaze like a lost soul taking its last glance of heaven; and then vanished as she had come.” The old man ceased to speak, and seemed brooding over the story which he had told. ** And did you ever hear of them again?” asked I at length. ““Yes, once/” he answered, with gloomy emphasis. ‘Ten years, after this affair, a pirate was caught and hanged in one of the ports of the Mediterranean. Just before his execution, he begged for a priest, saying that he could not die without confessing ove great crime in which he had had a share; and his confession cleared up a mystery which had long been the talk of Rio. Just about the time I went out, there was a vessel called the ‘ Redpole’ expected from Brazil with specie ; she was spoken off the cape here, and never heard of more. Well, this fellow said that he and his gang were on the look-out for her about Cape Frio, and that just before falling in with her, they spoke a brig from Glasgow, which they would not stop to plunder, for fear of letting the ‘ Redpole’ escape them. And they got her at last, sure enough. She was lying becalmed off Cape Frio in the glorious summer morning, and the passengers, having just finished breakfast, were all about the deck reading, talking, singing, making love, when the pirate came down upon them. ‘We nifled the cargo,’ said he, ‘scuttled the ship, and made everybody walk the plank.’ Bah! I don’t care to talk of it any more! Let us go down and begin packing; we sha'n’t be long of getting to Rio now.” ECoOMmicloooks (C(O)