Fortunately, the news hardly reached the town
before my brother himself did. She met him in the street, and
brought him home with her, forgetting all her anxieties in her
joy at his safety.
The "Mexican" had been attacked on the high seas by the piratical
craft "Panda," robbed of twenty thousand dollars in specie, se
fire, and abandoned to her fate, with the crew fastened down in
the hold. One small skylight had accidentally been overlooked by
the freebooters. The captain discovered it, and making his way
through it to the deck, succeeded in putting out the fire, else
vessel and sailors would have sunk together, and their fate would
never have been known.
Breathlessly we listened whenever my brother would relate the
story, which he did not at all enjoy doing, for a cutlass had
been swung over his head, and his life threatened by the pirate's
boatswain, demanding more money, after all had been taken. A
Genoese messmate, Iachimo, shortened to plain "Jack" by the
"Mexican's" crew, came to see my brother one day, and at the
dinner table he went through the whole adventure in pantomime,
which we children watched with wide-eyed terror and amusement.
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