Chapter Thirty Seven.Political questions.Happily for them, the boys saw little more of the horrors of the petty war. Aboard the schooner what met their eyes were the triumphs of peace. The next day flags were flying, bells ringing, guns firing, and the whole of the inhabitants of the town were marching in procession and shoutingVivas.Crowds gathered upon the shore nearest to where the schooner was moored, to shout themselves hoarse; and not content with this, they crowded into boats to row out round the little English vessel and shout themselves hoarser there, many of the boats containing women, who threw flowers which floated round.“I am getting rather tired of this,” said Fitz, at last. “I suppose it’s very nice to them, and they feel very grateful to your father for bringing the guns and ammunition to beat off this other President fellow; but keeping on with all this seems so babyish and silly. Why can’t they say, ‘Thank Heaven!’ and have done with it?”“Because they are what they are,” said Poole, half contemptuously. “Why, they must have been spoiling their gardens to bring all these flowers. They are no use to us. I should call that boat alongside—that big one with the flag up and all those well-dressed women on board.”“No, don’t!” cried Fitz excitedly. “Why, they’d come and shout more than ever, and begin singing again. What’s the good of doing that?”“I’ll tell you,” said Poole; “and I should tell them that it would be a deal more sensible to go back and fetch us a boat-load of fruit and vegetables, and fowls and eggs.”“Ah, to be sure,” cried Fitz. “It would please old Andy too; but—but look there; they are more sensible than you think for.”“Well done!” cried Poole, “Why, they couldn’t have heard what I said.”“No,” said Fitz, “and if they had there wouldn’t have been time. You must have telegraphed your thoughts. Why, there are two boat-loads.”“Three,” said Poole.And he was right, and a few minutes later that number of good-sized market-boats were close alongside, their owners apparently bent upon doing a good stroke of trade in the edibles most welcome to a ship’s crew after a long voyage.“Well, boys,” said the skipper, joining them, “who’s going to do the marketing? You, Poole, or I?”“Oh, you had better do it, father. I should be too extravagant.”“No,” said the skipper quietly. “The owners of theTealand I don’t wish to be stingy. The lads have done their work well, and I should like them to have a bit of a feast and a holiday now. Here, boatswain, pass the word for the cook and get half-a-dozen men to help. We must store up all that will keep. Here, Burgess, we may as well fill a chicken-coop or two.”“Humph!” grunted the mate surlily. “Want to turn my deck into a shop?”“No,” said the skipper good-humouredly, “but I want to have the cabin-table with something better on it to eat than we have had lately. I am afraid we shall be having Mr Burnett here so disgusted with the prog that he will be wanting to go ashore, and won’t come back.”“All right,” growled the mate, and he walked away with the skipper, to follow out the orders he had received.“I say,” said Fitz, “I wonder your father puts up with so much of the mate’s insolence. Any one would think that Burgess was the skipper; he puts on such airs.”“Oh, the dad knows him by heart. It is only his way. He always seems surly like that, but he’d do anything for father; and see what a seaman he is. Here, I say, let’s have some of those bananas. They do look prime.”“Yes,” said Fitz; “I like bananas. I should like that big golden bunch.”“Why, there must be a quarter of a hundredweight,” said Poole.“Do you think they’ll take my English money?”“Trust them!” said Poole. “I never met anybody yet who wouldn’t.”They made a sign to a swarthy-looking fellow in the stern of the nearest boat, and Fitz pointed to the great golden bunch.“How much?” he said.The man grinned, seized the bunch with his boat-hook, passed it over the bulwark, and let it fall upon the deck, hooked up another quickly, treated that the same, and was repeating the process, when Poole shouted at him to stop.“Hold hard!” he cried. “I am not going to pay for all these.”But the man paid no heed, but went on tossing in fruit, calling to the lads in Spanish to catch, andfeedingthem, as we say, in a game, with great golden balls in the shape of delicious-looking melons.“Here, is the fellow mad?” cried Fitz, who, a regular boy once more, enjoyed the fun of catching the beautiful gourds. “We shall have to throw all these back.”“Try one now,” said Poole.“Right,” cried Fitz. “Catch, stupid!” And he sent one of the biggest melons back.The man caught it deftly, and returned it, shouting—“No, no, no! Don Ramon—Don Ramon!”Something similar was going on upon the other side of the schooner, where, grinning with delight, the Camel was seizing the poultry handed in, and setting them at liberty upon the deck, while now an explanation followed.The three boat-loads of provisions were gifts from Don Ramon and his people to those who had helped them in their time of need, while the Don’s messengers seemed wild with delight, eagerly pointing out the good qualities of all they had brought, and chattering away as hard as ever they could, or laughing with delight when some active chicken escaped from the hands that held it or took flight when pitched aboard and made its way back to the shore. It was not only the men in the provision-barges that kept up an excited chorus, for they were joined by those in the boats that crowded round, the delivery being accompanied by cheers and the waving of hats and veils, the women’s voices rising shrilly in what seemed to be quite a paean of welcome and praise.“What time would you like dinner, laddies?” came from behind just then, in a familiar voice, and the boys turned sharply round to face the Camel, who seemed to be showing nearly all his teeth after the fashion of one of his namesakes in a good temper. “Ma word, isn’t it grand! Joost look! Roast and boiled cheecan and curry; and look at the garden-stuff. I suppose it’s all good to eat, but they’re throwing in things I never washed nor boiled before. It’s grand, laddies—it’s grand! Why, ma word! Hark at ’em! Here’s another big boat coming, and the skipper will have to give a great dinner, or we shall never get it all eaten.”“No,” cried Poole, “it’s a big boat with armed men, and—I say, Fitz, this doesn’t mean treachery? No, all right; that’s Don Ramon coming on board.”The tremendous burst of cheering from every boat endorsed the lad’s words, every one standing up shouting and cheering as the President’s craft came nearer, threading its way through the crowd of boats, whose occupants seemed to consider that there was not the slightest risk of a capsize into a bay that swarmed with sharks. But thanks to the management of Don Ramon’s crew, his barge reached the side of the schooner without causing mishap, and he sprang aboard, a gay-looking object in gold-laced uniform, not to grasp the skipper’s extended hand, but to fall upon his neck in silence and with tears in his eyes, while directly afterwards the two lads had to submit to a similar embrace.“Oh, I say,” whispered Fitz, as soon as the President had gone below with the skipper; “isn’t it horrid!”“Yes,” said Poole; “I often grumble at what I am, only a sort of apprentice aboard a schooner, though I am better off through the dad being one of the owners than most chaps would be; but one is English, after all.”“Yes,” said Fitz, with a sigh of content; “there is no getting over that.”Further conversation was ended by the approach of Burgess, the mate, who at a word from the captain had followed him and the President below, and who now came up to them with a peculiar grim smile about his lips, and the upper part of his face in the clouds, as Poole afterwards expressed it, probably meaning that the mate’s brow was wrinkled up into one of his fiercest frowns.“Here,” he growled, “you two young fellows have got to go below.”“Who said so?” cried Fitz. “The skipper?”“No, the President.”“But what for?” cried the middy.“Oh, I dunno,” replied the mate grimly, and with the smile expanding as he recalled something of which he had been a witness. “I thinks he wants to kiss you both again.”“Then I’ll be hanged if I go,” cried Fitz; “and that’s flat!”“Haw haw!” came from the mate’s lips, evidently meant for a laugh, which made the middy turn upon him fiercely; but there was no vestige of even a smile now as he said gruffly, “Yes, you must both come at once. The Don’s waiting to speak, and he said that he wouldn’t begin till you were there to hear it too.”“Come on, Burnett,” said Poole seriously, and then with his eyes twinkling he added, “You can have a good wash afterwards if he does.”“Oh,” cried Fitz, with his face scarlet, “I do hate these people’s ways;” and then, in spite of his previous remark about suspension, he followed the skipper’s son down into the cabin, with Burgess close behind, to find the President facing the door ready to rise with a dignified smile and point to the locker for the boys to take their seats.This done, he resumed his own, and proceeded to relate to the skipper as much as he could recall of what had been taking place, the main thing being that Villarayo’s large force had completely scattered on its way back through the mountainsen routeto San Cristobal, while Velova and the country round was entirely declaring for the victor, whose position was but for one thing quite safe.“Then,” said the skipper, as the President ceased, “you feel that if you marched for San Cristobal you would gain an easy victory there?”“I know my people so well, sir,” replied the President proudly, “that I can say there will be no victory and no fight. Villarayo would not get fifty men to stand by him, and he would either make for the mountains or come to meet me, and throw himself upon my mercy. And all this is through you. How great—how great the English people are!”Poole jumped and clapped his right hand upon his left arm, while Fitz turned scarlet as he looked an apology, for as the middy heard the President’s last words and saw him rise, a thrill of horror had run through him, and he had thrown out one hand, to give his companion a most painful pinch.But the President resumed his seat, and feeling that there was for the moment nothing to mind, the boy grew calm.“Ah,” said the skipper gravely. “Then but for one thing, Don Ramon, you feel now that you can hold your own.”“Yes,” was the reply bitterly. “But I shall not feel secure while that gunboat commands these seas. It seems absurd, ridiculous, that that small armour-plated vessel with its one great gun should have such power; but yet after all it is not absurd. It is to this little State what your grand navy is to your empire and the world. While that gunboat commands our bays I cannot feel safe.”“But you don’t know yet,” said the skipper quietly. “How will it be when her captain hears of Villarayo’s defeat? He may declare for you.”“No,” said the President. “That is what all my friends say. He is Villarayo’s cousin, and has always been my greatest enemy. He knows too that my first act would be to deprive him of his command.”“Then why do so?” said the skipper. “He need be your enemy no longer. Make him your friend.”“Impossible! I know him of old as a man I could not trust. The moment he hears of the defeat he will be sending messages to Villarayo bidding him fortify San Cristobal and gather his people there, while at any hour we may expect to see him steaming into this bay. That is the main reason of my coming to tell you now to be on your guard, and that I have been having the guns you brought mounted in a new earthwork on the point yonder, close to the sea.”“Well done!” cried the captain enthusiastically. “That was brave and thoughtful of you, Don Ramon,” and he held out his hand. “Why, you are quite an engineer. Then you did not mean to forsake your friend?”“Forsake him!” said the Don reproachfully, and he frowned. But it was for a moment only. “Ah,” he continued, “if you had only brought me over such a gunboat as that which holds me down, commanded by such a man as you, how changed my position would be!”“Yes,” said the skipper quietly. “But I did not; and I had hard work to bring you what I did, eh, Mr Burnett? The British Government did not much approve of what it called my filibustering expedition, Don.”“The British Government does not know Villarayo, sir, and it does not know me.”“That’s the evil of it, sir,” replied the captain. “Unfortunately the British Government recognises Villarayo as the President of the State, and you only as the head of a revolution; but once you are the accepted head of the people, the leader of what is good and right, Master Villarayo’s star will set; and that is bound to come.”“Yes,” said Don Ramon proudly; “that is bound to come in the future, if I live. For all that is good and right in this little State is on my side. But there is the gunboat, captain.”“Yes,” was the reply; “there is the gunboat, and as to my schooner, if I ventured everything on your side at sea, with her steaming power she would have me completely at her mercy, and with one shot send me to the bottom like a stone.”“Yes, I know,” said the Don, “as far as strength goes you would be like an infant fighting against a giant. But you English are clever. It was due to the bright thought of this young officer here that I was able to turn the tables upon Villarayo.”The blood flushed to Fitz’s forehead again—for he was, as Poole afterwards told him, a beggar to blush—and he gave a sudden start which made Poole move a little farther off to avoid a pinch.“What say you, Don Burnett?”If possible Fitz’s face grew a deeper scarlet.“Have you another such lightning stroke of genius to propose?”“No, sir,” said the boy sharply; “and if I had I must recollect that I am a neutral, a prisoner here, and it is my duty to hold my tongue.”“Ah, yes,” said the Don, frowning a little; “I had forgotten. You are in the Government’s service, and my good friend Captain Reed has told me how you happen to be here. But if the British Government knew exactly how things were, they would honour you for the way in which you have helped me on towards success.”“Yes, sir, no doubt,” said the lad frankly; “but the British Government doesn’t know what you say, and it doesn’t know me; but Captain Glossop does. He’s my government, sir, and it will be bad enough when I meet him, as it is. What will he say when he knows I’ve been fighting for the people in the schooner I came to take?”“Hah!” said the President thoughtfully, and he was silent for a few moments. Then rising he turned to the skipper. “I must go back, Captain Reed,” he said, “for there is much to do. But I have warned you of the peril in which you stand. You will help me, I know, if you can; but you must not have your brave little schooner sunk, and I know you will do what is best. Fate may favour us still more, and I shall go on in that hope.”Then without another word he strode out of the cabin, and went down into his barge amidst a storm of cheers and wavings of scarves and flags, while those on deck watched him threading his way towards the little fort.“He’s the best Spaniard I ever met, Burgess,” said the skipper.“Yes,” said the mate. “He isn’t a bad sort for his kind. If it was not for the poor beggars on board, who naturally enough all want to live, I should like to go some night and put a keg of powder aboard that gunboat, and send her to the bottom.”“Ah, but then you’d be doing wrong,” said the skipper.“Well, I said so, didn’t I? I shouldn’t like to have it on my conscience that I’d killed a couple of score fellow-creatures like that.”“Of course not; but that isn’t what I mean. That gunboat’s too valuable to sink, and, as you heard the Don say, the man who holds command of that vessel has the two cities at his mercy.”“Yes, I heard,” said Burgess; “and t’other side’s got it.”“That’s right,” said the skipper; “and if we could make the change—”“Yes,” said Burgess; “but it seems to me we can’t.”“It seems to me we can’t. It seems to me we can’t,” said Poole, repeating the mate’s words, as the two lads stood alone watching the cheering people in the boats.“Well,” cried Fitz pettishly, “what’s the good of keeping on saying that?”“None at all. But don’t you wish we could?”“No, I don’t, and I’d thank you not to talk to me like that. It’s like playing at trying to tempt a fellow situated as I am. Bother the gunboat and both the Dons! I wish I were back in the oldTonansagain.”“I don’t believe you,” said Poole, laughing. “You’re having ten times as much fun and excitement out here. I say,” he added, with a sniff, “I can smell something good.”And strangely enough the next minute the Camel came smiling up to them.“I say, laddies,” he said, “joost come for’ard as far as the galley. I don’t ask ye to come in, for, ma wud, she is hot! But just come and take a sniff as ye gang by. There’s a dinner cooking as would have satisfied the Don. I thot he meant to stay, but, puir chiel, I suppose he dinna ken what’s good.”
Happily for them, the boys saw little more of the horrors of the petty war. Aboard the schooner what met their eyes were the triumphs of peace. The next day flags were flying, bells ringing, guns firing, and the whole of the inhabitants of the town were marching in procession and shoutingVivas.
Crowds gathered upon the shore nearest to where the schooner was moored, to shout themselves hoarse; and not content with this, they crowded into boats to row out round the little English vessel and shout themselves hoarser there, many of the boats containing women, who threw flowers which floated round.
“I am getting rather tired of this,” said Fitz, at last. “I suppose it’s very nice to them, and they feel very grateful to your father for bringing the guns and ammunition to beat off this other President fellow; but keeping on with all this seems so babyish and silly. Why can’t they say, ‘Thank Heaven!’ and have done with it?”
“Because they are what they are,” said Poole, half contemptuously. “Why, they must have been spoiling their gardens to bring all these flowers. They are no use to us. I should call that boat alongside—that big one with the flag up and all those well-dressed women on board.”
“No, don’t!” cried Fitz excitedly. “Why, they’d come and shout more than ever, and begin singing again. What’s the good of doing that?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Poole; “and I should tell them that it would be a deal more sensible to go back and fetch us a boat-load of fruit and vegetables, and fowls and eggs.”
“Ah, to be sure,” cried Fitz. “It would please old Andy too; but—but look there; they are more sensible than you think for.”
“Well done!” cried Poole, “Why, they couldn’t have heard what I said.”
“No,” said Fitz, “and if they had there wouldn’t have been time. You must have telegraphed your thoughts. Why, there are two boat-loads.”
“Three,” said Poole.
And he was right, and a few minutes later that number of good-sized market-boats were close alongside, their owners apparently bent upon doing a good stroke of trade in the edibles most welcome to a ship’s crew after a long voyage.
“Well, boys,” said the skipper, joining them, “who’s going to do the marketing? You, Poole, or I?”
“Oh, you had better do it, father. I should be too extravagant.”
“No,” said the skipper quietly. “The owners of theTealand I don’t wish to be stingy. The lads have done their work well, and I should like them to have a bit of a feast and a holiday now. Here, boatswain, pass the word for the cook and get half-a-dozen men to help. We must store up all that will keep. Here, Burgess, we may as well fill a chicken-coop or two.”
“Humph!” grunted the mate surlily. “Want to turn my deck into a shop?”
“No,” said the skipper good-humouredly, “but I want to have the cabin-table with something better on it to eat than we have had lately. I am afraid we shall be having Mr Burnett here so disgusted with the prog that he will be wanting to go ashore, and won’t come back.”
“All right,” growled the mate, and he walked away with the skipper, to follow out the orders he had received.
“I say,” said Fitz, “I wonder your father puts up with so much of the mate’s insolence. Any one would think that Burgess was the skipper; he puts on such airs.”
“Oh, the dad knows him by heart. It is only his way. He always seems surly like that, but he’d do anything for father; and see what a seaman he is. Here, I say, let’s have some of those bananas. They do look prime.”
“Yes,” said Fitz; “I like bananas. I should like that big golden bunch.”
“Why, there must be a quarter of a hundredweight,” said Poole.
“Do you think they’ll take my English money?”
“Trust them!” said Poole. “I never met anybody yet who wouldn’t.”
They made a sign to a swarthy-looking fellow in the stern of the nearest boat, and Fitz pointed to the great golden bunch.
“How much?” he said.
The man grinned, seized the bunch with his boat-hook, passed it over the bulwark, and let it fall upon the deck, hooked up another quickly, treated that the same, and was repeating the process, when Poole shouted at him to stop.
“Hold hard!” he cried. “I am not going to pay for all these.”
But the man paid no heed, but went on tossing in fruit, calling to the lads in Spanish to catch, andfeedingthem, as we say, in a game, with great golden balls in the shape of delicious-looking melons.
“Here, is the fellow mad?” cried Fitz, who, a regular boy once more, enjoyed the fun of catching the beautiful gourds. “We shall have to throw all these back.”
“Try one now,” said Poole.
“Right,” cried Fitz. “Catch, stupid!” And he sent one of the biggest melons back.
The man caught it deftly, and returned it, shouting—
“No, no, no! Don Ramon—Don Ramon!”
Something similar was going on upon the other side of the schooner, where, grinning with delight, the Camel was seizing the poultry handed in, and setting them at liberty upon the deck, while now an explanation followed.
The three boat-loads of provisions were gifts from Don Ramon and his people to those who had helped them in their time of need, while the Don’s messengers seemed wild with delight, eagerly pointing out the good qualities of all they had brought, and chattering away as hard as ever they could, or laughing with delight when some active chicken escaped from the hands that held it or took flight when pitched aboard and made its way back to the shore. It was not only the men in the provision-barges that kept up an excited chorus, for they were joined by those in the boats that crowded round, the delivery being accompanied by cheers and the waving of hats and veils, the women’s voices rising shrilly in what seemed to be quite a paean of welcome and praise.
“What time would you like dinner, laddies?” came from behind just then, in a familiar voice, and the boys turned sharply round to face the Camel, who seemed to be showing nearly all his teeth after the fashion of one of his namesakes in a good temper. “Ma word, isn’t it grand! Joost look! Roast and boiled cheecan and curry; and look at the garden-stuff. I suppose it’s all good to eat, but they’re throwing in things I never washed nor boiled before. It’s grand, laddies—it’s grand! Why, ma word! Hark at ’em! Here’s another big boat coming, and the skipper will have to give a great dinner, or we shall never get it all eaten.”
“No,” cried Poole, “it’s a big boat with armed men, and—I say, Fitz, this doesn’t mean treachery? No, all right; that’s Don Ramon coming on board.”
The tremendous burst of cheering from every boat endorsed the lad’s words, every one standing up shouting and cheering as the President’s craft came nearer, threading its way through the crowd of boats, whose occupants seemed to consider that there was not the slightest risk of a capsize into a bay that swarmed with sharks. But thanks to the management of Don Ramon’s crew, his barge reached the side of the schooner without causing mishap, and he sprang aboard, a gay-looking object in gold-laced uniform, not to grasp the skipper’s extended hand, but to fall upon his neck in silence and with tears in his eyes, while directly afterwards the two lads had to submit to a similar embrace.
“Oh, I say,” whispered Fitz, as soon as the President had gone below with the skipper; “isn’t it horrid!”
“Yes,” said Poole; “I often grumble at what I am, only a sort of apprentice aboard a schooner, though I am better off through the dad being one of the owners than most chaps would be; but one is English, after all.”
“Yes,” said Fitz, with a sigh of content; “there is no getting over that.”
Further conversation was ended by the approach of Burgess, the mate, who at a word from the captain had followed him and the President below, and who now came up to them with a peculiar grim smile about his lips, and the upper part of his face in the clouds, as Poole afterwards expressed it, probably meaning that the mate’s brow was wrinkled up into one of his fiercest frowns.
“Here,” he growled, “you two young fellows have got to go below.”
“Who said so?” cried Fitz. “The skipper?”
“No, the President.”
“But what for?” cried the middy.
“Oh, I dunno,” replied the mate grimly, and with the smile expanding as he recalled something of which he had been a witness. “I thinks he wants to kiss you both again.”
“Then I’ll be hanged if I go,” cried Fitz; “and that’s flat!”
“Haw haw!” came from the mate’s lips, evidently meant for a laugh, which made the middy turn upon him fiercely; but there was no vestige of even a smile now as he said gruffly, “Yes, you must both come at once. The Don’s waiting to speak, and he said that he wouldn’t begin till you were there to hear it too.”
“Come on, Burnett,” said Poole seriously, and then with his eyes twinkling he added, “You can have a good wash afterwards if he does.”
“Oh,” cried Fitz, with his face scarlet, “I do hate these people’s ways;” and then, in spite of his previous remark about suspension, he followed the skipper’s son down into the cabin, with Burgess close behind, to find the President facing the door ready to rise with a dignified smile and point to the locker for the boys to take their seats.
This done, he resumed his own, and proceeded to relate to the skipper as much as he could recall of what had been taking place, the main thing being that Villarayo’s large force had completely scattered on its way back through the mountainsen routeto San Cristobal, while Velova and the country round was entirely declaring for the victor, whose position was but for one thing quite safe.
“Then,” said the skipper, as the President ceased, “you feel that if you marched for San Cristobal you would gain an easy victory there?”
“I know my people so well, sir,” replied the President proudly, “that I can say there will be no victory and no fight. Villarayo would not get fifty men to stand by him, and he would either make for the mountains or come to meet me, and throw himself upon my mercy. And all this is through you. How great—how great the English people are!”
Poole jumped and clapped his right hand upon his left arm, while Fitz turned scarlet as he looked an apology, for as the middy heard the President’s last words and saw him rise, a thrill of horror had run through him, and he had thrown out one hand, to give his companion a most painful pinch.
But the President resumed his seat, and feeling that there was for the moment nothing to mind, the boy grew calm.
“Ah,” said the skipper gravely. “Then but for one thing, Don Ramon, you feel now that you can hold your own.”
“Yes,” was the reply bitterly. “But I shall not feel secure while that gunboat commands these seas. It seems absurd, ridiculous, that that small armour-plated vessel with its one great gun should have such power; but yet after all it is not absurd. It is to this little State what your grand navy is to your empire and the world. While that gunboat commands our bays I cannot feel safe.”
“But you don’t know yet,” said the skipper quietly. “How will it be when her captain hears of Villarayo’s defeat? He may declare for you.”
“No,” said the President. “That is what all my friends say. He is Villarayo’s cousin, and has always been my greatest enemy. He knows too that my first act would be to deprive him of his command.”
“Then why do so?” said the skipper. “He need be your enemy no longer. Make him your friend.”
“Impossible! I know him of old as a man I could not trust. The moment he hears of the defeat he will be sending messages to Villarayo bidding him fortify San Cristobal and gather his people there, while at any hour we may expect to see him steaming into this bay. That is the main reason of my coming to tell you now to be on your guard, and that I have been having the guns you brought mounted in a new earthwork on the point yonder, close to the sea.”
“Well done!” cried the captain enthusiastically. “That was brave and thoughtful of you, Don Ramon,” and he held out his hand. “Why, you are quite an engineer. Then you did not mean to forsake your friend?”
“Forsake him!” said the Don reproachfully, and he frowned. But it was for a moment only. “Ah,” he continued, “if you had only brought me over such a gunboat as that which holds me down, commanded by such a man as you, how changed my position would be!”
“Yes,” said the skipper quietly. “But I did not; and I had hard work to bring you what I did, eh, Mr Burnett? The British Government did not much approve of what it called my filibustering expedition, Don.”
“The British Government does not know Villarayo, sir, and it does not know me.”
“That’s the evil of it, sir,” replied the captain. “Unfortunately the British Government recognises Villarayo as the President of the State, and you only as the head of a revolution; but once you are the accepted head of the people, the leader of what is good and right, Master Villarayo’s star will set; and that is bound to come.”
“Yes,” said Don Ramon proudly; “that is bound to come in the future, if I live. For all that is good and right in this little State is on my side. But there is the gunboat, captain.”
“Yes,” was the reply; “there is the gunboat, and as to my schooner, if I ventured everything on your side at sea, with her steaming power she would have me completely at her mercy, and with one shot send me to the bottom like a stone.”
“Yes, I know,” said the Don, “as far as strength goes you would be like an infant fighting against a giant. But you English are clever. It was due to the bright thought of this young officer here that I was able to turn the tables upon Villarayo.”
The blood flushed to Fitz’s forehead again—for he was, as Poole afterwards told him, a beggar to blush—and he gave a sudden start which made Poole move a little farther off to avoid a pinch.
“What say you, Don Burnett?”
If possible Fitz’s face grew a deeper scarlet.
“Have you another such lightning stroke of genius to propose?”
“No, sir,” said the boy sharply; “and if I had I must recollect that I am a neutral, a prisoner here, and it is my duty to hold my tongue.”
“Ah, yes,” said the Don, frowning a little; “I had forgotten. You are in the Government’s service, and my good friend Captain Reed has told me how you happen to be here. But if the British Government knew exactly how things were, they would honour you for the way in which you have helped me on towards success.”
“Yes, sir, no doubt,” said the lad frankly; “but the British Government doesn’t know what you say, and it doesn’t know me; but Captain Glossop does. He’s my government, sir, and it will be bad enough when I meet him, as it is. What will he say when he knows I’ve been fighting for the people in the schooner I came to take?”
“Hah!” said the President thoughtfully, and he was silent for a few moments. Then rising he turned to the skipper. “I must go back, Captain Reed,” he said, “for there is much to do. But I have warned you of the peril in which you stand. You will help me, I know, if you can; but you must not have your brave little schooner sunk, and I know you will do what is best. Fate may favour us still more, and I shall go on in that hope.”
Then without another word he strode out of the cabin, and went down into his barge amidst a storm of cheers and wavings of scarves and flags, while those on deck watched him threading his way towards the little fort.
“He’s the best Spaniard I ever met, Burgess,” said the skipper.
“Yes,” said the mate. “He isn’t a bad sort for his kind. If it was not for the poor beggars on board, who naturally enough all want to live, I should like to go some night and put a keg of powder aboard that gunboat, and send her to the bottom.”
“Ah, but then you’d be doing wrong,” said the skipper.
“Well, I said so, didn’t I? I shouldn’t like to have it on my conscience that I’d killed a couple of score fellow-creatures like that.”
“Of course not; but that isn’t what I mean. That gunboat’s too valuable to sink, and, as you heard the Don say, the man who holds command of that vessel has the two cities at his mercy.”
“Yes, I heard,” said Burgess; “and t’other side’s got it.”
“That’s right,” said the skipper; “and if we could make the change—”
“Yes,” said Burgess; “but it seems to me we can’t.”
“It seems to me we can’t. It seems to me we can’t,” said Poole, repeating the mate’s words, as the two lads stood alone watching the cheering people in the boats.
“Well,” cried Fitz pettishly, “what’s the good of keeping on saying that?”
“None at all. But don’t you wish we could?”
“No, I don’t, and I’d thank you not to talk to me like that. It’s like playing at trying to tempt a fellow situated as I am. Bother the gunboat and both the Dons! I wish I were back in the oldTonansagain.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Poole, laughing. “You’re having ten times as much fun and excitement out here. I say,” he added, with a sniff, “I can smell something good.”
And strangely enough the next minute the Camel came smiling up to them.
“I say, laddies,” he said, “joost come for’ard as far as the galley. I don’t ask ye to come in, for, ma wud, she is hot! But just come and take a sniff as ye gang by. There’s a dinner cooking as would have satisfied the Don. I thot he meant to stay, but, puir chiel, I suppose he dinna ken what’s good.”
Chapter Thirty Eight.A night’s excitement.Every one seemed bent on celebrating that day as a festival. The fight was a victory, and all were rejoicing in a noisy holiday, while for some hours the crew of the schooner had their turn.Not all, for after a few words with the skipper, the two lads went aloft with the binocular to keep a sharp look-out seaward, and more especially at the two headlands at the entrance to the bay, which they watched in the full expectation of seeing the grim grey nose of the gunboat peering round, prior to her showing her whole length and her swarthy plume of smoke.Arrangements had been made below as well, and the schooner was swinging to a big buoy—head to sea, the sails ready for running up or dropping down from her thin yards.“A nice land wind,” the skipper had said, “and if she came it would not be long before we were on equal terms with her.”“But it won’t last,” said Burgess gruffly. “It’ll either drop to a dead calm at sundown, or swing round and be dead ahead.”“Well, I don’t mind the last,” replied the captain, “but a dead calm would be dangerous, and sets me thinking whether it wouldn’t be better to be off at once.”“Well, that depends on you,” said the mate. “If it was me I should stop till night and chance it. But where do you mean to go? Right away home?”“I don’t know yet,” was the reply. “For some reasons I should like to stop and see Don Ramon right out of his difficulties. Besides, I have a little business to transact with him that may take days. No, I shan’t go off yet. I may stay here for months, working for Don Ramon. It all depends.”“Very well,” said the mate coolly, as if it did not matter in the slightest degree to him so long as he was at sea.From time to time the skipper in his walk up and down the deck paused to look up inquiringly, but always to be met with a quiet shake of the head, and go on again.But about half-an-hour before sundown, just when festivities were at their height on shore, and the men were for the most part idling about, leaning over the bulwarks and watching as much of the proceedings as they could see, the two lads, after an hour’s rest below, having returned to their look-out, Fitz suddenly exclaimed—“There she is! But she doesn’t look grey.”“No,” replied Poole eagerly. “What there is of her looks as if turned to gold.” Then loudly, “Sail ho!” though there was not a sail in sight, only the steamer’s funnel slowly coming into sight from behind one headland and beginning to show her smoke.All was activity now, the men starting to their different places at the bulwarks, and eagerly listening to the skipper’s “Where away?”“Coming round the south headland,” replied Poole.“That’s right,” said the skipper. “I can see her now.”“Well?” said Burgess.“I shan’t move yet. It will be pitch-dark in less than an hour. We can see her plainly enough with the open sea beyond her, but like as not they can’t see us, lying close up here under the land. The chances are that they won’t see us at all, and then we can run out in the darkness; and I suppose you will have no difficulty in avoiding the rocks?”“Oh, I don’t know,” said the mate coolly. “Like as not I may run spang on to them in the dark. I shan’t, of course, if I can help it.”“No,” said the skipper dryly; “I suppose not.”Their task ended, the boys slid down to the deck once more, and somehow the thought of his anomalous position on board the schooner did not trouble the middy for the time being, for he was seaman enough to be intensely interested in their position, and as eager as Poole for their escape.“Do you think the sun’s going down as quickly as usual?” he said suddenly; and his companion laughed.“What’s that for?” said Fitz. “Did I say something comic?”“Comic or stupid, whichever you like.”“Bah!” ejaculated Fitz angrily, feeling more annoyed with himself than with Poole.“Why of course she is going down at her usual rate.”“Sun’s a he,” said Fitz. “It isn’t the moon.”“Thankye. You have grown wise,” replied Poole sarcastically. “Do you know, I should have almost known that myself. But bother all this! I want to see the canvas shaken out ready for making a start.”“Very stupid too,” said Fitz.“Why?”“Because the people on board the gunboat mayn’t see us now, with our bare poles; and even if they could make us out they wouldn’t be able to distinguish us from the other craft lying close in shore.”“Right,” said Poole sharply. “I was getting impatient. I suppose we are going to run out through the darkness, same as we did before.”“I hope not,” said Fitz meaningly. “Once was enough for a scrape like that.”Poole grunted, with agreement in his cones, and then they leaned over the bulwarks together forward, following the example of most of the men, who were just as keenly on the look-out, and growing as excited in the expectation of the coming adventure, all but two, who, in obedience to a growl from the mate, lowered down the dinghy and then pulled her hand-over-hand by the mooring-cable to where it was made fast to the big ring in the buoy; and there they held on, ready to slip the minute the order was given from the deck.Meanwhile the rejoicings were going on ashore, no one so far having become aware of the approach of the enemy, till she was well clear of the headland, with her smoke floating out like an orange-plume upon a golden sky.“There’s the signal,” cried Fitz suddenly, as a ball of smoke darted out from the front of the fort, followed by a dull thud.“Hah!” said Poole. “That’s like the snap of a mongrel pup. By and by perhaps we shall hear the gunboat speak with a big bark like a mastiff. I wonder whether they will make us out.”“So do I,” said Fitz.“It will be easy enough to sneak off if they don’t.”“Don’t say sneak,” said Fitz.“Why?”“It sounds so cowardly.”“Well, this isn’t theTonans. TheTealwas made to sail, not to fight.”“Yes, of course,” said Fitz; “but I don’t like it all the same.”“All right, then, I won’t say it again. I wonder where the dad will make for.”“Well, that will depend on whether the gunboat sights us. I say, does it make you feel excited?”“Yes, awfully. I seem to want to be doing something.”“So do I,” said Fitz, “instead of watching the sun go down so slowly.”“Look at the gunboat, then. She’s not moving slowly. My word, she is slipping through the water! Why, she’s bound to see us if it don’t soon get dark.”The boys lapsed into silence, and as they ceased speaking they were almost startled by the change that had taken place on shore.The shouting and singing had ceased; there was no sound of music, and the bells had left off their clangour; while in place there came a low, dull, murmurous roar as of surf beating upon some rocky coast, a strange mingling of voices, hurrying foot-steps, indescribable, indistinct, and yet apparently expressive of excitement and the change from joy to fear.“It has upset them pretty well,” said Poole. “Why, I did hear that they were going in for fireworks as soon as it was dark, and they fired that gun like a challenge. I shouldn’t wonder if they have fireworks of a different kind to what they expect.”“Yes,” said Fitz excitedly. “The gunboat will begin firing shells perhaps, and set fire to the town.”“Bad luck to them if they do,” cried Poole earnestly, “for it’s a beautiful old place with its groves and gardens. Here, I say, Burnett, I wish this wretched little schooner were yourTonans, and we were going to fight for poor old Don Ramon. Don’t you?”“There’s the sun beginning to go down behind the mountain,” said Fitz, evading the question. “I say, how long will it be before it’s dark?”“Oh, you know as near as I do. Very soon, and the sooner the better. Oh, I say, she must see us. She’s heading round and coming straight in.”“For us or the fort?”“Both,” said Poole emphatically.And then they waited, fancying as the last gleam of the orange sun sank out of sight that they could hear the men breathing hard with suppressed excitement, as they stood there with their sleeves rolled up, waiting for the first order which should mean hauling away at ropes and the schooner beginning to glide towards the great buoy, slackening the cable for the men in the dinghy to cast-off.“Here, look at that!” cried Fitz excitedly, unconsciously identifying himself more and more with the crew.“What’s the matter?” said Poole.“Wet your hand, and hold it up.”“Right,” said Poole; “and so was old Burgess. I don’t believe there’s a man at sea knows more about the wind than he does. Half-an-hour ago, dead to sea; now right ashore.”“Stand by, my lads,” growled the boatswain in response to a word from the mate; and a deep low sigh seemed to run all across the deck, as to a man the crew drew in a deep long breath, while with the light rapidly dying out, and the golden tips of the mountains turning purple and then grey, the first order was given, a couple of staysails ran with jigging motion up to their full length, and a chirruping, creaking sound was heard as the men began to haul upon the yard of the mainsail.“Ah!” sighed Fitz. “We are beginning to move.”As he spoke the man at the wheel began to run the spokes quickly through his hands, with the result that to all appearance the men in the dinghy, and the buoy, appeared to be coming close under their quarter. Then there was a splash, the dinghy grated against the side, and one of its occupants climbed aboard with the painter, closely followed by the other, the first man running aft with the rope, to make it fast to the ring-bolt astern, while the stops of the capstan rattled as the cast-off cable began to come inboard.“Oh, it will be dark directly,” said Poole excitedly, “and I don’t believe they can see us now.”The enemy would have required keen eyes and good glasses on board the gunboat to have made them out, for as the sails filled, the schooner careened over and began to glide slowly along the shore as if making for the fort, which she passed and left about a quarter of a mile behind, before she was thrown up into the wind to go upon the other tack, spreading more and more canvas and increasing her speed, as the gunboat, now invisible save for a couple of lights which were hoisted up, came dead on for the town, nearing them fast, and calling for all the mate’s seamanship to get the schooner during one of her tacks well out of the heavy craft’s course, and leaving her to glide by; though as the darkness increased and they were evidently unseen, this became comparatively easy, for the war-vessel’s two lights shone out brighter and brighter at every one of the schooner’s tacks.But they were anxious times, and Fitz’s heart beat fast during the most vital reach, when it seemed to him as they were gliding by the gunboat’s bows that they must be seen, even as he could now make out a few sparks rising from time to time from the great funnel, to be smothered in the rolling smoke.But the next minute they were far away, and as they tacked it was this time so that they passed well abaft under the enemy’s stern.“Ah,” said a voice close to them; and as they looked round sharply it was to see the skipper close at hand. “There, boys,” he said, “that was running it pretty close. They can’t have been keeping a very good look-out aboard that craft. It was much nearer than I liked.—Ah, I wonder how poor Don Ramon will get on.”That finished the excitement for the night, for the next hours were passed in a monotonous tacking to and fro, making longer and longer reaches as they got farther out to sea; but they looked shoreward in vain for the flashes of guns and the deep thunderous roar of the big breech-loading cannon. But the sighing of the wind in the rigging and the lapping of water against the schooner’s bows were the only sounds that greeted them in the soft tropic night.
Every one seemed bent on celebrating that day as a festival. The fight was a victory, and all were rejoicing in a noisy holiday, while for some hours the crew of the schooner had their turn.
Not all, for after a few words with the skipper, the two lads went aloft with the binocular to keep a sharp look-out seaward, and more especially at the two headlands at the entrance to the bay, which they watched in the full expectation of seeing the grim grey nose of the gunboat peering round, prior to her showing her whole length and her swarthy plume of smoke.
Arrangements had been made below as well, and the schooner was swinging to a big buoy—head to sea, the sails ready for running up or dropping down from her thin yards.
“A nice land wind,” the skipper had said, “and if she came it would not be long before we were on equal terms with her.”
“But it won’t last,” said Burgess gruffly. “It’ll either drop to a dead calm at sundown, or swing round and be dead ahead.”
“Well, I don’t mind the last,” replied the captain, “but a dead calm would be dangerous, and sets me thinking whether it wouldn’t be better to be off at once.”
“Well, that depends on you,” said the mate. “If it was me I should stop till night and chance it. But where do you mean to go? Right away home?”
“I don’t know yet,” was the reply. “For some reasons I should like to stop and see Don Ramon right out of his difficulties. Besides, I have a little business to transact with him that may take days. No, I shan’t go off yet. I may stay here for months, working for Don Ramon. It all depends.”
“Very well,” said the mate coolly, as if it did not matter in the slightest degree to him so long as he was at sea.
From time to time the skipper in his walk up and down the deck paused to look up inquiringly, but always to be met with a quiet shake of the head, and go on again.
But about half-an-hour before sundown, just when festivities were at their height on shore, and the men were for the most part idling about, leaning over the bulwarks and watching as much of the proceedings as they could see, the two lads, after an hour’s rest below, having returned to their look-out, Fitz suddenly exclaimed—
“There she is! But she doesn’t look grey.”
“No,” replied Poole eagerly. “What there is of her looks as if turned to gold.” Then loudly, “Sail ho!” though there was not a sail in sight, only the steamer’s funnel slowly coming into sight from behind one headland and beginning to show her smoke.
All was activity now, the men starting to their different places at the bulwarks, and eagerly listening to the skipper’s “Where away?”
“Coming round the south headland,” replied Poole.
“That’s right,” said the skipper. “I can see her now.”
“Well?” said Burgess.
“I shan’t move yet. It will be pitch-dark in less than an hour. We can see her plainly enough with the open sea beyond her, but like as not they can’t see us, lying close up here under the land. The chances are that they won’t see us at all, and then we can run out in the darkness; and I suppose you will have no difficulty in avoiding the rocks?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the mate coolly. “Like as not I may run spang on to them in the dark. I shan’t, of course, if I can help it.”
“No,” said the skipper dryly; “I suppose not.”
Their task ended, the boys slid down to the deck once more, and somehow the thought of his anomalous position on board the schooner did not trouble the middy for the time being, for he was seaman enough to be intensely interested in their position, and as eager as Poole for their escape.
“Do you think the sun’s going down as quickly as usual?” he said suddenly; and his companion laughed.
“What’s that for?” said Fitz. “Did I say something comic?”
“Comic or stupid, whichever you like.”
“Bah!” ejaculated Fitz angrily, feeling more annoyed with himself than with Poole.
“Why of course she is going down at her usual rate.”
“Sun’s a he,” said Fitz. “It isn’t the moon.”
“Thankye. You have grown wise,” replied Poole sarcastically. “Do you know, I should have almost known that myself. But bother all this! I want to see the canvas shaken out ready for making a start.”
“Very stupid too,” said Fitz.
“Why?”
“Because the people on board the gunboat mayn’t see us now, with our bare poles; and even if they could make us out they wouldn’t be able to distinguish us from the other craft lying close in shore.”
“Right,” said Poole sharply. “I was getting impatient. I suppose we are going to run out through the darkness, same as we did before.”
“I hope not,” said Fitz meaningly. “Once was enough for a scrape like that.”
Poole grunted, with agreement in his cones, and then they leaned over the bulwarks together forward, following the example of most of the men, who were just as keenly on the look-out, and growing as excited in the expectation of the coming adventure, all but two, who, in obedience to a growl from the mate, lowered down the dinghy and then pulled her hand-over-hand by the mooring-cable to where it was made fast to the big ring in the buoy; and there they held on, ready to slip the minute the order was given from the deck.
Meanwhile the rejoicings were going on ashore, no one so far having become aware of the approach of the enemy, till she was well clear of the headland, with her smoke floating out like an orange-plume upon a golden sky.
“There’s the signal,” cried Fitz suddenly, as a ball of smoke darted out from the front of the fort, followed by a dull thud.
“Hah!” said Poole. “That’s like the snap of a mongrel pup. By and by perhaps we shall hear the gunboat speak with a big bark like a mastiff. I wonder whether they will make us out.”
“So do I,” said Fitz.
“It will be easy enough to sneak off if they don’t.”
“Don’t say sneak,” said Fitz.
“Why?”
“It sounds so cowardly.”
“Well, this isn’t theTonans. TheTealwas made to sail, not to fight.”
“Yes, of course,” said Fitz; “but I don’t like it all the same.”
“All right, then, I won’t say it again. I wonder where the dad will make for.”
“Well, that will depend on whether the gunboat sights us. I say, does it make you feel excited?”
“Yes, awfully. I seem to want to be doing something.”
“So do I,” said Fitz, “instead of watching the sun go down so slowly.”
“Look at the gunboat, then. She’s not moving slowly. My word, she is slipping through the water! Why, she’s bound to see us if it don’t soon get dark.”
The boys lapsed into silence, and as they ceased speaking they were almost startled by the change that had taken place on shore.
The shouting and singing had ceased; there was no sound of music, and the bells had left off their clangour; while in place there came a low, dull, murmurous roar as of surf beating upon some rocky coast, a strange mingling of voices, hurrying foot-steps, indescribable, indistinct, and yet apparently expressive of excitement and the change from joy to fear.
“It has upset them pretty well,” said Poole. “Why, I did hear that they were going in for fireworks as soon as it was dark, and they fired that gun like a challenge. I shouldn’t wonder if they have fireworks of a different kind to what they expect.”
“Yes,” said Fitz excitedly. “The gunboat will begin firing shells perhaps, and set fire to the town.”
“Bad luck to them if they do,” cried Poole earnestly, “for it’s a beautiful old place with its groves and gardens. Here, I say, Burnett, I wish this wretched little schooner were yourTonans, and we were going to fight for poor old Don Ramon. Don’t you?”
“There’s the sun beginning to go down behind the mountain,” said Fitz, evading the question. “I say, how long will it be before it’s dark?”
“Oh, you know as near as I do. Very soon, and the sooner the better. Oh, I say, she must see us. She’s heading round and coming straight in.”
“For us or the fort?”
“Both,” said Poole emphatically.
And then they waited, fancying as the last gleam of the orange sun sank out of sight that they could hear the men breathing hard with suppressed excitement, as they stood there with their sleeves rolled up, waiting for the first order which should mean hauling away at ropes and the schooner beginning to glide towards the great buoy, slackening the cable for the men in the dinghy to cast-off.
“Here, look at that!” cried Fitz excitedly, unconsciously identifying himself more and more with the crew.
“What’s the matter?” said Poole.
“Wet your hand, and hold it up.”
“Right,” said Poole; “and so was old Burgess. I don’t believe there’s a man at sea knows more about the wind than he does. Half-an-hour ago, dead to sea; now right ashore.”
“Stand by, my lads,” growled the boatswain in response to a word from the mate; and a deep low sigh seemed to run all across the deck, as to a man the crew drew in a deep long breath, while with the light rapidly dying out, and the golden tips of the mountains turning purple and then grey, the first order was given, a couple of staysails ran with jigging motion up to their full length, and a chirruping, creaking sound was heard as the men began to haul upon the yard of the mainsail.
“Ah!” sighed Fitz. “We are beginning to move.”
As he spoke the man at the wheel began to run the spokes quickly through his hands, with the result that to all appearance the men in the dinghy, and the buoy, appeared to be coming close under their quarter. Then there was a splash, the dinghy grated against the side, and one of its occupants climbed aboard with the painter, closely followed by the other, the first man running aft with the rope, to make it fast to the ring-bolt astern, while the stops of the capstan rattled as the cast-off cable began to come inboard.
“Oh, it will be dark directly,” said Poole excitedly, “and I don’t believe they can see us now.”
The enemy would have required keen eyes and good glasses on board the gunboat to have made them out, for as the sails filled, the schooner careened over and began to glide slowly along the shore as if making for the fort, which she passed and left about a quarter of a mile behind, before she was thrown up into the wind to go upon the other tack, spreading more and more canvas and increasing her speed, as the gunboat, now invisible save for a couple of lights which were hoisted up, came dead on for the town, nearing them fast, and calling for all the mate’s seamanship to get the schooner during one of her tacks well out of the heavy craft’s course, and leaving her to glide by; though as the darkness increased and they were evidently unseen, this became comparatively easy, for the war-vessel’s two lights shone out brighter and brighter at every one of the schooner’s tacks.
But they were anxious times, and Fitz’s heart beat fast during the most vital reach, when it seemed to him as they were gliding by the gunboat’s bows that they must be seen, even as he could now make out a few sparks rising from time to time from the great funnel, to be smothered in the rolling smoke.
But the next minute they were far away, and as they tacked it was this time so that they passed well abaft under the enemy’s stern.
“Ah,” said a voice close to them; and as they looked round sharply it was to see the skipper close at hand. “There, boys,” he said, “that was running it pretty close. They can’t have been keeping a very good look-out aboard that craft. It was much nearer than I liked.—Ah, I wonder how poor Don Ramon will get on.”
That finished the excitement for the night, for the next hours were passed in a monotonous tacking to and fro, making longer and longer reaches as they got farther out to sea; but they looked shoreward in vain for the flashes of guns and the deep thunderous roar of the big breech-loading cannon. But the sighing of the wind in the rigging and the lapping of water against the schooner’s bows were the only sounds that greeted them in the soft tropic night.
Chapter Thirty Nine.“Never say die!”As long as the excitement kept up, Fitz paced the deck with Poole, but for two or three nights past regular sleep and his eyelids had been at odds. The consequence was that all at once in the silence and darkness, when there was nothing to take his attention, he became very silent, walking up and down the deck mechanically with his companion to keep himself awake, and a short time afterwards for no reason at all that he was aware of, but because one leg went before the other automatically, his will having ceased to convey its desires to these his supporters, and long after Poole had ceased talking to him, he suddenly gave a violent lurch, driving Poole, who was in a similar condition, sideways, and if it had not been for the bulwark close at hand they would both have gone down like skittles. For they were both fast asleep, sound as a top, fast as a church, but on the instant wide-awake and angry.“What did you do that for?” cried Fitz fiercely. “I didn’t,” cried Poole angrily. “You threw yourself at me.”“That I didn’t! How could I?”“How should I know? But you’ve made a great bruise on my elbow; I know that.”“Quiet! quiet!” said the mate, in a deep low growl. “Do you want to bring the gunboat down on us, shouting like that?” And he seemed to loom up upon them out of the darkness.“Well, but he—” began Fitz.“Quiet, I tell you! I have been watching you lads these last ten minutes. You’ve both been rolling about all over the deck, and I expected to see you go down on your noses every moment. Snoring too, one of you was.”“Well, that wasn’t I, I’m sure,” cried Fitz shortly.“Oh, are you?” said the mate. “Well, I’m not. There, you are no use up here, either of you. Go down and tumble into your bunks at once.”“But—” began Poole.“You heard what I said, my lad. Go and have a good long snooze, and don’t make a stupid of yourself, bandying words like that. The watch have all been laughing at you both. Now then, clear the deck. I am going to keep things quiet.”The officer in charge of a deck is “monarch of all he surveys,” like Robinson Crusoe of old, according to the poem, and as “his right there is none to dispute,” both lads yielded to Burgesses sway, went down to their berths, rolled in just as they were, and the next minute were fast asleep, breathing more loudly than would have been pleasant to any neighbour. But there was none.Their sleep was very short but very solid all the same, and they were ready to spring up wide-awake and hurry on deck just before sunrise, upon hearing the trampling overhead of the watch going through the manoeuvres known as ’bout ship, and then proceeding to obey orders angrily shouted at them by the mate, whose loud voice betokened that he was in an unusual state of excitement, for his words were emphatic in the extreme as he addressed the men after the cry of “all hands on deck,” in a way which suggested to one who overheard that they were a gang of the laziest, slowest slovens that ever handled a rope.“Here, rouse up!” cried Poole. “Hear him?”“Hear him? Yes. What’s the matter?”“I dunno. Any one would think that we were going to run the gunboat down.”The lads ran up on deck, and stared in wonder, for instead of the catastrophe that Poole had verbally portrayed, the reverse seemed the probability. In fact, instead of their tacking against the adverse wind having carried them well out to sea, the progress they had made in a direct line was comparatively small, and to the dismay of both the sleepers as they looked over the stern, there was the gunboat not three miles away, foaming down after them under a full pressure of steam.“How do you account for this?” said Fitz.“I dunno, unless they went right in, got to know that we had just left, and came after us full chase.”It was the idea of the moment, and to use the familiar saying, Poole had hit the right nail on the head. It was morning, and Nature’s signals were in the east, announcing that the sun was coming up full speed, while the former tactics of tacking against the freshening wind had to be set aside at once, for it was evidently only a question of an hour before the gunboat would be within easy range, and what she might do in the interim was simply doubtful. But the skipper and his mate were hard at work; the course had been altered for another run southward, close along the coast; studding-sail booms were being run out from the yards ready for the white sails to be hoisted; and a trial of speed was being prepared between canvas and steam, proof of which was given from the gunboat by the dense clouds of black smoke rolling out of the funnel and showing how hard the stokers were at work.It was a busy time then; sail after sail filled out till the schooner showed as a cloud of canvas gilded by the rising sun, while she literally skimmed through the water dangerously near to a rocky coast.But as the sun rose higher that danger passed away, for as if by magic the wind dropped, leaving the sails flapping, the graceful vessel no longer dipping her cut-water low-down into the surface and covering the deck with spray.Poole looked at his father and drew his breath hard, for he saw too plainly the peril in which they stood. They were still gliding gently through the water, but more slowly each minute, and riding now upon an even keel, while the gunboat astern was tearing along, literally ploughing her way, and sending a diverging foam-covered wave to starboard and port.“Pretty well all over, Burgess,” he said, in a low hoarse voice, and Fitz stole out his hand to grip Poole’s wrist and give a warm sympathetic pressure; and he did not draw it back, but stood holding on, listening the while to the mate’s slow, thoughtful reply.“I don’t know yet,” said the latter, half closing his eyes and looking towards the west. “The winds play rum games here sometimes, and you hardly know where you are. They may go through one of their manoeuvres now. This is just about the time, and I shouldn’t wonder if we had a sharp breeze from the west again, same as we did yesterday and the day before.”“No such luck,” said the skipper bitterly. “It won’t be the wind off shore; it will be theTealon. You’ll have to make for the first opening you see as soon as there’s wind enough, and run her right in. Don’t hesitate a moment, Burgess; run her right ashore, and then we must do the best we can with the boats, or swim for it.”“Run her right ashore!” said the mate grimly.“Yes—so that she’s a hopeless wreck, impossible to get off.”“Seems a pity,” growled the mate; and his words found an echo in Fitz Burnett’s breast.“Yes, but it would be a greater pity for my beautiful little schooner to fall a prize to that wretched tea-kettle there; and I won’t have my lads treated as prisoners. I’d sooner we all had to take to the woods.”“All right, sir. You’re skipper; I’m mate. It’s you to give orders, me to carry them out. But I’m beginning to think that they’ll have us before we get the wind. You see, it’s nearly calm.”“Yes,” said the skipper, “I see; and I wonder they haven’t begun firing before.”He walked right aft with the mate, leaving the lads alone, with Poole looking five years older, so blank and drawn was his face. But it brightened directly, as he felt the warm grip of the young middy’s hand, and heard his words.“Oh, Poole, old chap,” Fitz half whispered, after a glance round to see if they were likely to be overheard, but only to find that every seaman was either intent upon his duty or watching the enemy in expectation of a first shell or ball from the heavy gun. “Oh, Poole, old chap,” he said again, “I am sorry—I am indeed!”“Sorry?” said Poole quietly. “Yes; for you’ve all been very kind to me.”“Well, I am glad to hear you say so, for I tried to be, and the dad liked you because you were such a cocky, plucky little chap. But there: it’s no use to cry over spilt milk. I suppose it isn’t spilt yet, though,” he added, with a little laugh; “but the jug will be cracked directly, and away it will all go into the sea. But I say, can you swim?”“Oh yes, I can swim. I learnt when I was a cadet.”“That’s right; and if we can’t get off in one of the boats you keep close alongside of me—I know the dad will like me to stick with you—and I’ll get a life-belt, or one of the buoys, and we will share it together, one to rest in it while the other swims and tows. We’ll get to shore somehow, never fear—the whole lot of us, I expect, for the lads will stand by, I am sure.”“Yes, yes,” said Fitz, glancing round over the sunlit sea. “But what about the sharks?”“Oh!” ejaculated Poole involuntarily, and he changed colour.It was just as the skipper and mate came walking sharply forward again.“There!” cried the latter triumphantly. “What did I say?”“Splendid!” cried the skipper. “But will it last?”“It did yesterday. Why not to-day?” cried the mate fiercely.For the wind had suddenly come in a sharp gust which filled the sails, making several of them snap with a loud report, laid the schooner on her beam-ends, and sent her rushing through the water for some hundred yards, making it come foaming up through the scuppers in fountains, to flood the deck, before she was eased off by the man at the wheel and rose again.But directly after the calm asserted itself once more; the greater part of the sea was like a mirror, with only cat’s-paws here and there; and the gunboat came pounding on as stern as fate.“All right,” said the mate cheerily; “it’s coming again,” and he ran to the man at the wheel.“Stand by, my lads,” cried the skipper, “ready to let go those stuns’ls. We mustn’t be taken again like that.”The men rushed to the sheets, and when the wind came again, it came to stay, striking the heavily-canvassed schooner a tremendous blow, to which she only careened over, and not a drop of water came on board, for the light studding-sails were let go to begin flapping and snapping like whip-thongs until the violence of the gust had passed; and by that time the men were busy reducing the canvas, and the schooner was flying through the water like the winning yacht in a race.“Never say die!” cried Poole, with a laugh. “We are going faster than the gunboat now.”“Yes,” replied Fitz thoughtfully; “but she has the command of the sea, and can cut us off.”“As long as her coals last,” said Poole, “and they’re burning them pretty fast over this. I’d give something to guess what old Burgess means to do. He’s got something in his head that I don’t believe my father knows.”“Oh, he’d be sure to know,” said Fitz, whose hopes were rising fast, his sympathies being entirely now with those who had proved such friends.“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. Old Burgess can be as mute as a fish when he likes, and there’s nothing pleases him better than taking people by surprise.”“But what can he do more than race right away?”“Well, I’ll tell you, Burnett, old chap. It’s no use for him to think of racing right away. What he’ll do is this. I have said something of the kind to you before. He knows this coast just like his ABC, the bays and rivers and backwaters and crannies all amongst the rocks. He’s spent days and days out in a boat sounding and making rough charts; and what he’ll do, I feel certain, is this—make for some passage in amongst the rocks where he can take the littleTeal, run right in where the gunboat dare not come, and stay there till she’s tired out.”“But then they’ll sink us with their gun.”“Oh no; he’ll get her right into shelter where she can’t be seen.”“Then the gunboat captain will send after us with his armed boats and board us where we lie.”“Let him,” said Poole grimly. “That’s just what old Burgess and all the lads would like. Mr Don what’s-his-name and his men would find they had such a hedgehog to tackle that they’d soon go back again faster than they came.”“Do you think your father would do that?” said Fitz, after a glance aft, to note that they were leaving the gunboat steadily behind.“Why, of course,” cried Poole. “But it’s resisting a man-of-war.”“Well, what of that? We didn’t boggle about doing it with one of the Queen’s ships, so you don’t suppose that dad would make much bones about refusing to strike to a mongrel Spaniard like that?”Fitz was silent, and somehow then in a whirl of exciting thoughts it did not seem so very serious a thing, but brought up passages he had read in old naval books of cutting-out expeditions and brave fightings against heavy odds. And then as they went flying through the water the exhilaration of the chase took up all his attention, and the conversation dropped out of his mental sight, for it lasted hours, and during all that time theTealskimmed along, following out her old tactics close to a lovely surf-beaten shore, passing bluff and valley openings where there were evidently streams pouring out from the mountains to discolour the silver sea, and offering, as the middy thought, endless havens of refuge, till about the hottest part of the day, when the pitch seemed to be seething in the seams. All at once the captain, after a short conversation with his mate, went forward with a couple of men, and Burgess went himself to take the wheel. “Now then,” said Poole, “what did I tell you?”“Do you think we are going to turn in here?”“That’s just what I do think. Here, do you want a job?”“Yes—no—of course—What do you want me to do?”“Go and tell the Camel to get the oiliest breakfast he can all ready, for we are half-starved.”“Don’t talk nonsense!” cried Fitz angrily. “What do you mean?”“Mean? Why, look! Old Grumbo’s running us right in for the line of surf below that bluff. There’s an opening there, I’ll be bound. Look at the coloured water too. There must be a good-sized river coming down from somewhere. Oh, the old fox! He knows what he’s about. There’s one of his holes in there, and the hunt is nearly up. I mean, the littleTealis going in to find her nest.”“Well, I hope you are right,” said Fitz quietly; and then he stood watching while the little schooner seemed as if being steered to certain destruction, but only to glide by the threatened danger into a wide opening hidden heretofore, and where the rocks ran up, jungle-covered, forming the sides of a lovely valley whose limits were hidden from the deck.At that moment the middy became aware of the fact that one of the men was busy with the skipper heaving the lead and shouting the soundings loud enough for the mate to hear, while with educated ear Fitz listened and grasped the fact how dangerously the water shoaled, till it seemed at last that the next minute they must run aground.For a few minutes it was as though something was clutching at the boy’s throat, making his breath come hot and fast; and he glanced back to see where the gunboat was, but looked in vain, for a side of the valley rose like a towering wall between, and on glancing in the other direction there was another stupendous wall running up to mountain height, and all of gorgeous greens.The next minute, when he looked forward, feeling that at any moment he might have to swim, the voice of the man with the lead-line seemed to ring out louder and more clear, announcing fathoms, as a short time before he had shouted feet.There was a curious stillness too reigning around. The roar of surf upon the rocky shore was gone; the wind had dropped; and theTealwas gliding slowly up the grand natural sanctuary into which she had been steered, while the lad awakened to the fact that they had entered a rushing stream, and as the feeling gained ground of all this being unreal, their safety being, as it were, a dream, he was brought back to the bare matter-of-fact by hearing an order given, the anchor descending with a splash, and Poole bringing his hand down sharply upon his shoulder, to cry exultantly—“There, old chap; what did I say!”
As long as the excitement kept up, Fitz paced the deck with Poole, but for two or three nights past regular sleep and his eyelids had been at odds. The consequence was that all at once in the silence and darkness, when there was nothing to take his attention, he became very silent, walking up and down the deck mechanically with his companion to keep himself awake, and a short time afterwards for no reason at all that he was aware of, but because one leg went before the other automatically, his will having ceased to convey its desires to these his supporters, and long after Poole had ceased talking to him, he suddenly gave a violent lurch, driving Poole, who was in a similar condition, sideways, and if it had not been for the bulwark close at hand they would both have gone down like skittles. For they were both fast asleep, sound as a top, fast as a church, but on the instant wide-awake and angry.
“What did you do that for?” cried Fitz fiercely. “I didn’t,” cried Poole angrily. “You threw yourself at me.”
“That I didn’t! How could I?”
“How should I know? But you’ve made a great bruise on my elbow; I know that.”
“Quiet! quiet!” said the mate, in a deep low growl. “Do you want to bring the gunboat down on us, shouting like that?” And he seemed to loom up upon them out of the darkness.
“Well, but he—” began Fitz.
“Quiet, I tell you! I have been watching you lads these last ten minutes. You’ve both been rolling about all over the deck, and I expected to see you go down on your noses every moment. Snoring too, one of you was.”
“Well, that wasn’t I, I’m sure,” cried Fitz shortly.
“Oh, are you?” said the mate. “Well, I’m not. There, you are no use up here, either of you. Go down and tumble into your bunks at once.”
“But—” began Poole.
“You heard what I said, my lad. Go and have a good long snooze, and don’t make a stupid of yourself, bandying words like that. The watch have all been laughing at you both. Now then, clear the deck. I am going to keep things quiet.”
The officer in charge of a deck is “monarch of all he surveys,” like Robinson Crusoe of old, according to the poem, and as “his right there is none to dispute,” both lads yielded to Burgesses sway, went down to their berths, rolled in just as they were, and the next minute were fast asleep, breathing more loudly than would have been pleasant to any neighbour. But there was none.
Their sleep was very short but very solid all the same, and they were ready to spring up wide-awake and hurry on deck just before sunrise, upon hearing the trampling overhead of the watch going through the manoeuvres known as ’bout ship, and then proceeding to obey orders angrily shouted at them by the mate, whose loud voice betokened that he was in an unusual state of excitement, for his words were emphatic in the extreme as he addressed the men after the cry of “all hands on deck,” in a way which suggested to one who overheard that they were a gang of the laziest, slowest slovens that ever handled a rope.
“Here, rouse up!” cried Poole. “Hear him?”
“Hear him? Yes. What’s the matter?”
“I dunno. Any one would think that we were going to run the gunboat down.”
The lads ran up on deck, and stared in wonder, for instead of the catastrophe that Poole had verbally portrayed, the reverse seemed the probability. In fact, instead of their tacking against the adverse wind having carried them well out to sea, the progress they had made in a direct line was comparatively small, and to the dismay of both the sleepers as they looked over the stern, there was the gunboat not three miles away, foaming down after them under a full pressure of steam.
“How do you account for this?” said Fitz.
“I dunno, unless they went right in, got to know that we had just left, and came after us full chase.”
It was the idea of the moment, and to use the familiar saying, Poole had hit the right nail on the head. It was morning, and Nature’s signals were in the east, announcing that the sun was coming up full speed, while the former tactics of tacking against the freshening wind had to be set aside at once, for it was evidently only a question of an hour before the gunboat would be within easy range, and what she might do in the interim was simply doubtful. But the skipper and his mate were hard at work; the course had been altered for another run southward, close along the coast; studding-sail booms were being run out from the yards ready for the white sails to be hoisted; and a trial of speed was being prepared between canvas and steam, proof of which was given from the gunboat by the dense clouds of black smoke rolling out of the funnel and showing how hard the stokers were at work.
It was a busy time then; sail after sail filled out till the schooner showed as a cloud of canvas gilded by the rising sun, while she literally skimmed through the water dangerously near to a rocky coast.
But as the sun rose higher that danger passed away, for as if by magic the wind dropped, leaving the sails flapping, the graceful vessel no longer dipping her cut-water low-down into the surface and covering the deck with spray.
Poole looked at his father and drew his breath hard, for he saw too plainly the peril in which they stood. They were still gliding gently through the water, but more slowly each minute, and riding now upon an even keel, while the gunboat astern was tearing along, literally ploughing her way, and sending a diverging foam-covered wave to starboard and port.
“Pretty well all over, Burgess,” he said, in a low hoarse voice, and Fitz stole out his hand to grip Poole’s wrist and give a warm sympathetic pressure; and he did not draw it back, but stood holding on, listening the while to the mate’s slow, thoughtful reply.
“I don’t know yet,” said the latter, half closing his eyes and looking towards the west. “The winds play rum games here sometimes, and you hardly know where you are. They may go through one of their manoeuvres now. This is just about the time, and I shouldn’t wonder if we had a sharp breeze from the west again, same as we did yesterday and the day before.”
“No such luck,” said the skipper bitterly. “It won’t be the wind off shore; it will be theTealon. You’ll have to make for the first opening you see as soon as there’s wind enough, and run her right in. Don’t hesitate a moment, Burgess; run her right ashore, and then we must do the best we can with the boats, or swim for it.”
“Run her right ashore!” said the mate grimly.
“Yes—so that she’s a hopeless wreck, impossible to get off.”
“Seems a pity,” growled the mate; and his words found an echo in Fitz Burnett’s breast.
“Yes, but it would be a greater pity for my beautiful little schooner to fall a prize to that wretched tea-kettle there; and I won’t have my lads treated as prisoners. I’d sooner we all had to take to the woods.”
“All right, sir. You’re skipper; I’m mate. It’s you to give orders, me to carry them out. But I’m beginning to think that they’ll have us before we get the wind. You see, it’s nearly calm.”
“Yes,” said the skipper, “I see; and I wonder they haven’t begun firing before.”
He walked right aft with the mate, leaving the lads alone, with Poole looking five years older, so blank and drawn was his face. But it brightened directly, as he felt the warm grip of the young middy’s hand, and heard his words.
“Oh, Poole, old chap,” Fitz half whispered, after a glance round to see if they were likely to be overheard, but only to find that every seaman was either intent upon his duty or watching the enemy in expectation of a first shell or ball from the heavy gun. “Oh, Poole, old chap,” he said again, “I am sorry—I am indeed!”
“Sorry?” said Poole quietly. “Yes; for you’ve all been very kind to me.”
“Well, I am glad to hear you say so, for I tried to be, and the dad liked you because you were such a cocky, plucky little chap. But there: it’s no use to cry over spilt milk. I suppose it isn’t spilt yet, though,” he added, with a little laugh; “but the jug will be cracked directly, and away it will all go into the sea. But I say, can you swim?”
“Oh yes, I can swim. I learnt when I was a cadet.”
“That’s right; and if we can’t get off in one of the boats you keep close alongside of me—I know the dad will like me to stick with you—and I’ll get a life-belt, or one of the buoys, and we will share it together, one to rest in it while the other swims and tows. We’ll get to shore somehow, never fear—the whole lot of us, I expect, for the lads will stand by, I am sure.”
“Yes, yes,” said Fitz, glancing round over the sunlit sea. “But what about the sharks?”
“Oh!” ejaculated Poole involuntarily, and he changed colour.
It was just as the skipper and mate came walking sharply forward again.
“There!” cried the latter triumphantly. “What did I say?”
“Splendid!” cried the skipper. “But will it last?”
“It did yesterday. Why not to-day?” cried the mate fiercely.
For the wind had suddenly come in a sharp gust which filled the sails, making several of them snap with a loud report, laid the schooner on her beam-ends, and sent her rushing through the water for some hundred yards, making it come foaming up through the scuppers in fountains, to flood the deck, before she was eased off by the man at the wheel and rose again.
But directly after the calm asserted itself once more; the greater part of the sea was like a mirror, with only cat’s-paws here and there; and the gunboat came pounding on as stern as fate.
“All right,” said the mate cheerily; “it’s coming again,” and he ran to the man at the wheel.
“Stand by, my lads,” cried the skipper, “ready to let go those stuns’ls. We mustn’t be taken again like that.”
The men rushed to the sheets, and when the wind came again, it came to stay, striking the heavily-canvassed schooner a tremendous blow, to which she only careened over, and not a drop of water came on board, for the light studding-sails were let go to begin flapping and snapping like whip-thongs until the violence of the gust had passed; and by that time the men were busy reducing the canvas, and the schooner was flying through the water like the winning yacht in a race.
“Never say die!” cried Poole, with a laugh. “We are going faster than the gunboat now.”
“Yes,” replied Fitz thoughtfully; “but she has the command of the sea, and can cut us off.”
“As long as her coals last,” said Poole, “and they’re burning them pretty fast over this. I’d give something to guess what old Burgess means to do. He’s got something in his head that I don’t believe my father knows.”
“Oh, he’d be sure to know,” said Fitz, whose hopes were rising fast, his sympathies being entirely now with those who had proved such friends.
“Oh, no, he wouldn’t. Old Burgess can be as mute as a fish when he likes, and there’s nothing pleases him better than taking people by surprise.”
“But what can he do more than race right away?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Burnett, old chap. It’s no use for him to think of racing right away. What he’ll do is this. I have said something of the kind to you before. He knows this coast just like his ABC, the bays and rivers and backwaters and crannies all amongst the rocks. He’s spent days and days out in a boat sounding and making rough charts; and what he’ll do, I feel certain, is this—make for some passage in amongst the rocks where he can take the littleTeal, run right in where the gunboat dare not come, and stay there till she’s tired out.”
“But then they’ll sink us with their gun.”
“Oh no; he’ll get her right into shelter where she can’t be seen.”
“Then the gunboat captain will send after us with his armed boats and board us where we lie.”
“Let him,” said Poole grimly. “That’s just what old Burgess and all the lads would like. Mr Don what’s-his-name and his men would find they had such a hedgehog to tackle that they’d soon go back again faster than they came.”
“Do you think your father would do that?” said Fitz, after a glance aft, to note that they were leaving the gunboat steadily behind.
“Why, of course,” cried Poole. “But it’s resisting a man-of-war.”
“Well, what of that? We didn’t boggle about doing it with one of the Queen’s ships, so you don’t suppose that dad would make much bones about refusing to strike to a mongrel Spaniard like that?”
Fitz was silent, and somehow then in a whirl of exciting thoughts it did not seem so very serious a thing, but brought up passages he had read in old naval books of cutting-out expeditions and brave fightings against heavy odds. And then as they went flying through the water the exhilaration of the chase took up all his attention, and the conversation dropped out of his mental sight, for it lasted hours, and during all that time theTealskimmed along, following out her old tactics close to a lovely surf-beaten shore, passing bluff and valley openings where there were evidently streams pouring out from the mountains to discolour the silver sea, and offering, as the middy thought, endless havens of refuge, till about the hottest part of the day, when the pitch seemed to be seething in the seams. All at once the captain, after a short conversation with his mate, went forward with a couple of men, and Burgess went himself to take the wheel. “Now then,” said Poole, “what did I tell you?”
“Do you think we are going to turn in here?”
“That’s just what I do think. Here, do you want a job?”
“Yes—no—of course—What do you want me to do?”
“Go and tell the Camel to get the oiliest breakfast he can all ready, for we are half-starved.”
“Don’t talk nonsense!” cried Fitz angrily. “What do you mean?”
“Mean? Why, look! Old Grumbo’s running us right in for the line of surf below that bluff. There’s an opening there, I’ll be bound. Look at the coloured water too. There must be a good-sized river coming down from somewhere. Oh, the old fox! He knows what he’s about. There’s one of his holes in there, and the hunt is nearly up. I mean, the littleTealis going in to find her nest.”
“Well, I hope you are right,” said Fitz quietly; and then he stood watching while the little schooner seemed as if being steered to certain destruction, but only to glide by the threatened danger into a wide opening hidden heretofore, and where the rocks ran up, jungle-covered, forming the sides of a lovely valley whose limits were hidden from the deck.
At that moment the middy became aware of the fact that one of the men was busy with the skipper heaving the lead and shouting the soundings loud enough for the mate to hear, while with educated ear Fitz listened and grasped the fact how dangerously the water shoaled, till it seemed at last that the next minute they must run aground.
For a few minutes it was as though something was clutching at the boy’s throat, making his breath come hot and fast; and he glanced back to see where the gunboat was, but looked in vain, for a side of the valley rose like a towering wall between, and on glancing in the other direction there was another stupendous wall running up to mountain height, and all of gorgeous greens.
The next minute, when he looked forward, feeling that at any moment he might have to swim, the voice of the man with the lead-line seemed to ring out louder and more clear, announcing fathoms, as a short time before he had shouted feet.
There was a curious stillness too reigning around. The roar of surf upon the rocky shore was gone; the wind had dropped; and theTealwas gliding slowly up the grand natural sanctuary into which she had been steered, while the lad awakened to the fact that they had entered a rushing stream, and as the feeling gained ground of all this being unreal, their safety being, as it were, a dream, he was brought back to the bare matter-of-fact by hearing an order given, the anchor descending with a splash, and Poole bringing his hand down sharply upon his shoulder, to cry exultantly—
“There, old chap; what did I say!”
Chapter Forty.“Defence, not defiance.”“What did you say? Oh yes, I remember. It has come out all right; but we shall have them in here directly, after us.”“What’s that?” said the skipper, who overheard his words. “I hope not, and I doubt of their getting within shot. Here, Burgess.”“Hallo!” growled the mate, and he came slowly up, looking, as Poole afterwards said, like the proverbial bear with a sore head.“Here’s Mr Burnett prophesying all kinds of evil things about us.”“Ah!” growled the mate. “He didn’t know any better. I never prophesy till after the thing has taken place. What did he say?”“That we shall have the gunboat in here after us directly. What do you say to that?”The mate’s sour countenance expanded into a broad smile, and he came close up to the middy and clapped him on the shoulder.“Good lad,” he said. “I hope you are right.”“Hope I’m right!” said Fitz, staring. “Why, if she steams in within shot they’ll make such practice with that gun that we shall be knocked all to pieces.”“You mean they would if they got well within sight; but look for yourself. Where could they lay her to get a shot? I can’t see.”“No,” said Fitz thoughtfully, as he looked anxiously back and saw that they were thoroughly sheltered by projecting cliff and headland. “I suppose they couldn’t get within shot.”“No. That’s right, my lad; and they couldn’t come in anything like near enough if it were all open water from here to where they are now.”“What, is the water so shoal?” asked Fitz.“Shoal? Yes,” growled the mate, his face growing sour again. “We’ve nearly scraped the bottom over and over again. I only wish they’d try it. They’d be fast on some of those jags and splinters, and most likely with a hole in the bottom. My opinion, Captain Reed, is that if the skipper of that gunboat does venture in he’ll never get out again; and that would suit us down to the ground. Bah—bah! He knows this coast too well, and he won’t be such a fool as to try.”“No,” said the skipper confidently; “you are quite right, Burgess. He won’t be such a fool as to try. But we must have a boat out at once to go back and watch, for I’m pretty sure that Don what’s-his-name will be lowering a couple of his with armed crews to come in and scuttle us if they can’t tow us out.”“Ah, well, they can’t do that,” said the mate coolly. “They’d be meeting us on equal terms then, and you won’t let them.”“No,” said the skipper, smiling, as he turned to Fitz; “I don’t think we shall let them do that, Mr Burnett. My lads will be only too glad to receive the gunboat’s crew on equal terms and send them back with a flea in their ears.”“Ay,” said the mate, with a grunt; “and quite right too. I think it is our turn to give them a bit of our mind, after the way in which they have been scuffling us about lately. Shall I go with the boat?”“Yes, you’d better. Take the gig, and four men to row.”“I can go, father?” cried Poole eagerly.“Well, I don’t know,” said the skipper. “If you go, Mr Burnett here will want to be with you, and I know how particular he is as a young officer not to be seen having anything to do with our filibustering, as he calls it.”Fitz frowned with annoyance, and seemed to give himself a regular snatch.“You’d rather not go, of course?” continued the skipper dryly.“I can’t help wanting to go, Mr Reed,” replied the lad sharply; “and if I went just as a spectator I don’t see how I should be favouring any of your designs.”“Well, no,” said the skipper dryly, “if you put it like that. I don’t see after all how you could be accused of turning buccaneer. But would you really like to go?”“Why, of course,” said Fitz. “It’s all experience.”“Off with you then,” said the skipper; “only don’t get within shot. I don’t want to have to turn amateur doctor again on your behalf. I am clever enough at cuts and bruises, and I dare say if I were hard put to it I could manage to mend a broken leg or arm, but I wouldn’t undertake to be hunting you all over to find where a rifle-bullet had gone. Accidents are my line, not wounds received in war; and, by the way, while we are talking of such subjects, if we have to lie up here in this river for any time, you had better let me give you a dose or two of quinine.”“Oh, but I am quite well now,” cried Fitz.“Yes, and I want you to keep so, my lad. That’s a very good old proverb that says, ‘Prevention is better than cure.’”A very short time afterwards the schooner’s gig, with her little well-armed crew, was allowed to glide down with the stream, with the mate, boat-hook in hand, standing in the bows, Poole astern with the rudder-lines, and Fitz a spectator, thoroughly enjoying the beauty of the vast cliffs that arose on either side as they descended towards the river’s mouth.It was all zigzag and winding, the stream carrying them along slowly, for a sharp sea-breeze was dead against them, explaining how it was that the schooner had sailed up so easily as she had.Fitz had ample proof, without Poole’s drawing his attention to the fact, that there was no possibility of the gunboat making practice with her heavy piece, for everywhere the schooner was sheltered, the course of the river being all zigzag and wind, till all at once, as the men were dipping their oars gently, the gig passed round a bend, and there was the enemy about three miles off shore, lying-to, with her great black plume of smoke floating towards them, spreading out like a haze and making her look strange and indistinct.“Did you bring a glass, Poole, my lad?” growled the mate.“No; I never thought of that.”“Humph! Never mind. I think I can manage. Both of you lads give a sharp look-out and tell me what you can see.”“Why, there’s something between us and her hull,” said Poole, “but I can’t quite make out what it is. Surely she isn’t on a rock?”“No,” cried Fitz; “I can see. She has lowered a boat.”“Two,” said the mate, in his deep hoarse voice. “I can make ’em out now. I thought that was it at first. Pull away, my lads, for all you’re worth. Pull your port line, my lad, and let’s run back. Hug the shore as much as you can, so as to keep out of the stream. Hah! If we had thought to bring a mast and sail and one of the other boats we could have been back in no time with this wind astern.”The gig swung round as the men bent in their quick steady pull, and they began to ascend the stream once more, while Fitz rose in his place, to look back watching the half-obscured gunboat till they had swept round the bend once more and she was out of sight, when he re-seated himself and noticed that the mate was still standing, intent upon cautiously taking cartridges from his pouch and thrusting them into the chambers of the revolver which he had drawn from the holster of his belt.This looked like business, and Fitz turned to dart an inquiring look at his companion, who answered it with a nod.“Well,” thought Fitz, “if he thinks we are going to have a fight before we get back, why doesn’t he order his men to load?”But it proved that the mate did not anticipate a fight before they got back. He had other thoughts in his head, and when at last, after a long and anxious row against the sharp current, with the lads constantly looking back to see if the gunboat’s men were within sight, they reached the final zigzag, and caught sight of the schooner, old Burgess raised his hand and fired three shots at the face of the towering cliff.These three were echoed back as about a score, when there was an interval, and three tiny puffs of grey smoke darted from the schooner’s deck, and echoed in their turn.“Signal answered,” said Poole quietly, and the men made their ash-blades bend again in their eagerness to get back aboard.“Why, what have they been about?” whispered Fitz.“Looks like going fishing,” said Poole, with a grin. “Don’t chaff at a time like this,” cried Fitz pettishly. “I didn’t know that you had got boarding-netting like a man-of-war.”“What, don’t you remember the night you came aboard?”“Not likely, with everything knocked out of my head as it was.”“Oh yes, we’ve got all these little necessaries. Father goes on the Volunteer system: ‘Defence, not Defiance.’”“Well, that’s defiant enough,” said Fitz. “It’s like saying, ‘You’re not coming aboard here,’ in string.”“Of course. You don’t suppose we want a set of half Indian, half Spanish mongrel sailors taking possession of theTeal? You wait till we get aboard, and you’ll see all our lads busy with the fleas.”“Busy with the fleas?” said Fitz. “What do you mean?”“Those father talked about, to put in the Don’s ears before we send them back.”“How can you go on making poor jokes at a time like this?” said the middy, in a tone of annoyance. “Why, it looks as if we are in for a serious fight.”“As ifweare!” said Poole, emphasising the “we.”“How many more times am I to tell you that it is our game and not yours?”“But look here,” said Fitz excitedly. “Your father really does mean to fight?”“My father does, and so does every one else,” replied Poole. “In oars, my lads,” and the next moment the mate hooked on close to the gangway. “I suppose,” continued Poole, “you will stop on deck till the row begins? You will want to see all you can.”“Of course,” said Fitz, whose face was once more growing flushed.“Well, I wouldn’t stop up too long. The enemy may fire, and you will be safer down below.”“Yes, I suppose so,” said the middy coolly; “and of course you are coming too?”“Coming too? That’s likely, isn’t it?” said Poole contemptuously.“Just as likely as that I should go and hide.”“But it’s no business of yours. You are not going to fight.”“No,” said Fitz, “but I want to see.”
“What did you say? Oh yes, I remember. It has come out all right; but we shall have them in here directly, after us.”
“What’s that?” said the skipper, who overheard his words. “I hope not, and I doubt of their getting within shot. Here, Burgess.”
“Hallo!” growled the mate, and he came slowly up, looking, as Poole afterwards said, like the proverbial bear with a sore head.
“Here’s Mr Burnett prophesying all kinds of evil things about us.”
“Ah!” growled the mate. “He didn’t know any better. I never prophesy till after the thing has taken place. What did he say?”
“That we shall have the gunboat in here after us directly. What do you say to that?”
The mate’s sour countenance expanded into a broad smile, and he came close up to the middy and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good lad,” he said. “I hope you are right.”
“Hope I’m right!” said Fitz, staring. “Why, if she steams in within shot they’ll make such practice with that gun that we shall be knocked all to pieces.”
“You mean they would if they got well within sight; but look for yourself. Where could they lay her to get a shot? I can’t see.”
“No,” said Fitz thoughtfully, as he looked anxiously back and saw that they were thoroughly sheltered by projecting cliff and headland. “I suppose they couldn’t get within shot.”
“No. That’s right, my lad; and they couldn’t come in anything like near enough if it were all open water from here to where they are now.”
“What, is the water so shoal?” asked Fitz.
“Shoal? Yes,” growled the mate, his face growing sour again. “We’ve nearly scraped the bottom over and over again. I only wish they’d try it. They’d be fast on some of those jags and splinters, and most likely with a hole in the bottom. My opinion, Captain Reed, is that if the skipper of that gunboat does venture in he’ll never get out again; and that would suit us down to the ground. Bah—bah! He knows this coast too well, and he won’t be such a fool as to try.”
“No,” said the skipper confidently; “you are quite right, Burgess. He won’t be such a fool as to try. But we must have a boat out at once to go back and watch, for I’m pretty sure that Don what’s-his-name will be lowering a couple of his with armed crews to come in and scuttle us if they can’t tow us out.”
“Ah, well, they can’t do that,” said the mate coolly. “They’d be meeting us on equal terms then, and you won’t let them.”
“No,” said the skipper, smiling, as he turned to Fitz; “I don’t think we shall let them do that, Mr Burnett. My lads will be only too glad to receive the gunboat’s crew on equal terms and send them back with a flea in their ears.”
“Ay,” said the mate, with a grunt; “and quite right too. I think it is our turn to give them a bit of our mind, after the way in which they have been scuffling us about lately. Shall I go with the boat?”
“Yes, you’d better. Take the gig, and four men to row.”
“I can go, father?” cried Poole eagerly.
“Well, I don’t know,” said the skipper. “If you go, Mr Burnett here will want to be with you, and I know how particular he is as a young officer not to be seen having anything to do with our filibustering, as he calls it.”
Fitz frowned with annoyance, and seemed to give himself a regular snatch.
“You’d rather not go, of course?” continued the skipper dryly.
“I can’t help wanting to go, Mr Reed,” replied the lad sharply; “and if I went just as a spectator I don’t see how I should be favouring any of your designs.”
“Well, no,” said the skipper dryly, “if you put it like that. I don’t see after all how you could be accused of turning buccaneer. But would you really like to go?”
“Why, of course,” said Fitz. “It’s all experience.”
“Off with you then,” said the skipper; “only don’t get within shot. I don’t want to have to turn amateur doctor again on your behalf. I am clever enough at cuts and bruises, and I dare say if I were hard put to it I could manage to mend a broken leg or arm, but I wouldn’t undertake to be hunting you all over to find where a rifle-bullet had gone. Accidents are my line, not wounds received in war; and, by the way, while we are talking of such subjects, if we have to lie up here in this river for any time, you had better let me give you a dose or two of quinine.”
“Oh, but I am quite well now,” cried Fitz.
“Yes, and I want you to keep so, my lad. That’s a very good old proverb that says, ‘Prevention is better than cure.’”
A very short time afterwards the schooner’s gig, with her little well-armed crew, was allowed to glide down with the stream, with the mate, boat-hook in hand, standing in the bows, Poole astern with the rudder-lines, and Fitz a spectator, thoroughly enjoying the beauty of the vast cliffs that arose on either side as they descended towards the river’s mouth.
It was all zigzag and winding, the stream carrying them along slowly, for a sharp sea-breeze was dead against them, explaining how it was that the schooner had sailed up so easily as she had.
Fitz had ample proof, without Poole’s drawing his attention to the fact, that there was no possibility of the gunboat making practice with her heavy piece, for everywhere the schooner was sheltered, the course of the river being all zigzag and wind, till all at once, as the men were dipping their oars gently, the gig passed round a bend, and there was the enemy about three miles off shore, lying-to, with her great black plume of smoke floating towards them, spreading out like a haze and making her look strange and indistinct.
“Did you bring a glass, Poole, my lad?” growled the mate.
“No; I never thought of that.”
“Humph! Never mind. I think I can manage. Both of you lads give a sharp look-out and tell me what you can see.”
“Why, there’s something between us and her hull,” said Poole, “but I can’t quite make out what it is. Surely she isn’t on a rock?”
“No,” cried Fitz; “I can see. She has lowered a boat.”
“Two,” said the mate, in his deep hoarse voice. “I can make ’em out now. I thought that was it at first. Pull away, my lads, for all you’re worth. Pull your port line, my lad, and let’s run back. Hug the shore as much as you can, so as to keep out of the stream. Hah! If we had thought to bring a mast and sail and one of the other boats we could have been back in no time with this wind astern.”
The gig swung round as the men bent in their quick steady pull, and they began to ascend the stream once more, while Fitz rose in his place, to look back watching the half-obscured gunboat till they had swept round the bend once more and she was out of sight, when he re-seated himself and noticed that the mate was still standing, intent upon cautiously taking cartridges from his pouch and thrusting them into the chambers of the revolver which he had drawn from the holster of his belt.
This looked like business, and Fitz turned to dart an inquiring look at his companion, who answered it with a nod.
“Well,” thought Fitz, “if he thinks we are going to have a fight before we get back, why doesn’t he order his men to load?”
But it proved that the mate did not anticipate a fight before they got back. He had other thoughts in his head, and when at last, after a long and anxious row against the sharp current, with the lads constantly looking back to see if the gunboat’s men were within sight, they reached the final zigzag, and caught sight of the schooner, old Burgess raised his hand and fired three shots at the face of the towering cliff.
These three were echoed back as about a score, when there was an interval, and three tiny puffs of grey smoke darted from the schooner’s deck, and echoed in their turn.
“Signal answered,” said Poole quietly, and the men made their ash-blades bend again in their eagerness to get back aboard.
“Why, what have they been about?” whispered Fitz.
“Looks like going fishing,” said Poole, with a grin. “Don’t chaff at a time like this,” cried Fitz pettishly. “I didn’t know that you had got boarding-netting like a man-of-war.”
“What, don’t you remember the night you came aboard?”
“Not likely, with everything knocked out of my head as it was.”
“Oh yes, we’ve got all these little necessaries. Father goes on the Volunteer system: ‘Defence, not Defiance.’”
“Well, that’s defiant enough,” said Fitz. “It’s like saying, ‘You’re not coming aboard here,’ in string.”
“Of course. You don’t suppose we want a set of half Indian, half Spanish mongrel sailors taking possession of theTeal? You wait till we get aboard, and you’ll see all our lads busy with the fleas.”
“Busy with the fleas?” said Fitz. “What do you mean?”
“Those father talked about, to put in the Don’s ears before we send them back.”
“How can you go on making poor jokes at a time like this?” said the middy, in a tone of annoyance. “Why, it looks as if we are in for a serious fight.”
“As ifweare!” said Poole, emphasising the “we.”
“How many more times am I to tell you that it is our game and not yours?”
“But look here,” said Fitz excitedly. “Your father really does mean to fight?”
“My father does, and so does every one else,” replied Poole. “In oars, my lads,” and the next moment the mate hooked on close to the gangway. “I suppose,” continued Poole, “you will stop on deck till the row begins? You will want to see all you can.”
“Of course,” said Fitz, whose face was once more growing flushed.
“Well, I wouldn’t stop up too long. The enemy may fire, and you will be safer down below.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said the middy coolly; “and of course you are coming too?”
“Coming too? That’s likely, isn’t it?” said Poole contemptuously.
“Just as likely as that I should go and hide.”
“But it’s no business of yours. You are not going to fight.”
“No,” said Fitz, “but I want to see.”