“What, one with a lady in it?” shouted Jack, in feigned voice.
“Ye-e-s,” was the distant answer.
“Just shot down before you. You can’t mistake it; row fast. Fire into ’em, it will soon bring the rascals to their senses.”
True to this advice the second boat shot after the first at a rapid rate.
Ere long shots were fired in the distance.
“Hang me!” said old Bates, in high glee, “if one boat ain’t fighting the other. Why, the fellows are all gone mad!”
“No matter,” said Captain Jack; “we have got the lady. Is she safely housed, Bates?”
“Yes, but very pale and weak, poor creature. She couldn’t make out who and what we were with those masks on, so I had to tell her we were a party of friends who had leagued together for her deliverance.”
“Very good; but, of course, you didn’t tell her that we had leagued together to get four or five sacks full of plunder, eh?”
“Not very likely.”