"Board me! ye pirates! the first that lays a finger on my bulwarks, off goes his hand at the wrist." Suiting the action to the word, he hacked at the tow-rope so vigorously that it gave way, and the boats fell astern.
Helen Rolleston uttered a shriek of dismay and pity.

"Oh, save him!" she cried.
"Make sail!" cried Cooper; and, in a few seconds, they got all her canvas set upon the cutter.
It seemed a hopeless chase for these shells to sail after that dying monster with her cloud of canvas all drawing, alow and aloft.
But it did not prove so.

The gentle breeze was an advantage to light craft, and the dying _Proserpine_ was full of water, and could only crawl.
After a few moments of great anxiety the boats crept up, the cutter on her port and the long-boat on her starboard quarter.
Wylie ran forward, and, hailing Hudson, implored him, in the friendliest tones, to give himself a chance.

Then tried him by his vanity, "Come, and command the boats, old fellow.

How can we navigate them on the Pacific without _you ?"_ Hudson was now leaning over the taffrail utterly drunk.