‘My good fellow,’ says Rumbold, with great eagerness, ‘that is precisely the favour I came to ask of you.’
And with that, he fumbled in his bosom, and presently drew out a sort of flat pouch, made of thin but tough leather, with straps which buckled round the body. We both looked eagerly to see that we were not observed, but not a soul could be seen stirring upon deck. A lantern, swinging from the weather-foreshrouds, cast a dusky gleam around upon the dripping bulwarks, and the wet and slippery planks—but we were alone.
‘Hush!’ says he, softly. ‘The pearls are in this pouch—there is a good thousand pounds worth—strap the belt tightly round you, under your clothes, the first time you have an opportunity. If you deliver it up to me safely at Jamaica, a third of the profits shall be yours—if anything happens to me, I make you my legatee—keep pouch and pearls, and make the best of them.’
He had hardly made the transfer, when a shadow glided darkly between us and the lantern. We both rushed aft as far as the foremast, and pried eagerly about, but not a creature was to be seen.
‘Bah!’ said Rumbold, ‘it was only the light, swinging with the ship as she rolls.’ But my own belief was that some one had glided across the deck, and mounted the weather-forerigging. I had not time, however, to communicate my thoughts to Rumbold, when we heard loud voices, and saw a glimmering of lights aft, and immediately Jerry came forwards, walking not very steadily, although he had good sea-legs, and clinging to the rigging, when the ship made a wilder lurch than ordinary.
‘Farewell—take care!’ exclaimed Rumbold. ‘I must not be seen here.’
So saying, he slid over to leeward, and crept aft, under the black shadow of the sails. Meantime, Jerry approached, and taking the lantern from the forerigging, grasped my shoulder, and asked me—in a thick voice and with a hiccup—whether all was well? I replied in the affirmative: upon which he steadied himself on the deck as well as he could, and began to hum over a song to himself—sometimes stopping to put the same question to me, half a dozen times over, after the manner of a drunken man—when, all at once, the ship giving a violent lee-lurch, he was pitched bodily against the bulwarks, and at the same moment a heavy marline spike fell with a crash from the rigging, tearing up white splinters in the deck. Had it not been for that lucky lurch, that sharp and ponderous iron would have cleft the mate’s head. All this happened in a moment, but the weapon had hardly struck the deck, when Jerry bounded to his legs, and with a tremendous oath, that there was treachery somewhere, called to me to go aloft in the weather-rigging, while he took the lee. The danger he had escaped seemed to have sobered the mate at once. I sprung into the tightened shrouds, half bewildered at the thing, while Jerry screamed to me, from the opposite rigging, to look sharp and take care of a knife-thrust, for he was certain it was that villainous Portuguese dog who had flung the marline spike.
Up we both went into the rocking rigging. We climbed over the rail of the foretop at the same moment, and I saw that Jerry held the barrel of a small pistol between his teeth.
‘The murthering rogue!’ he cried. ‘But he has made his last cast—either he or I go down on that deck a dead man!’
We both looked up to the heel of the top-gallant mast. The white canvas was tugging and straining upon the bending yard, and the loose lee-rigging was rattling against the mast and sail.