noon
She was commanded , it was said , by an Englishman , a villain of no ordinary cast , who never intentionally left alive any of those he plundered to tell the tale of their wrongs . He sailed his vessel , a schooner carrying twelve guns , under Spanish colours , though of course he hoisted , on occasion , those of any other nation to suit his purpose . We all knew both him and his schooner , for before her real character was suspected , we had for some days laid alongside her at the Havanna , and were in consequence selected by the admiral to look out for her . We had been so employed for several weeks , when , one day towards noon , we made out a sail to the southward , towards which we ran down with a light northerly wind . As we neared her , which we rapidly did , we saw that she was a lofty ship -- a merchantman evidently -- and that she was not only not moving through the waters , but that her braces were loose , and her yards swinging about in every direction . Not a soul was looking over her bulwarks when we came within hail , but the men in the tops sang out that they could see several people lying about the decks either asleep or dead . We ran almost alongside , when I was ordered to board her with one of the gigs .