Then every man jack of his crew with a rush is around him on the quarter-deck, Dalton crying: “For God’s sake, take me with you, captain. I won’t let you go alone.”
But Chester says: “It is necessary that you take charge of the Dover Lass,” and selects those to go with him very carefully, picking out such men as will appear most like sailors of a trading ship, and being fortunate in finding twenty-seven of them who speak Spanish, having picked up more or less of the language about the West Indies and Mediterranean.
Therefore he only takes twenty-seven, headed by Martin Corker, who growls that he has cut enough Spanish throats to have picked up the lingo.
The preparations being finished, Chester takes his first lieutenant into his cabin and speaks very seriously: “These are my orders. Iron every man of the Spanish crew who are in the hold of the Dover Lass with double manacles, leg and wrist. Take no chance of their escaping. Make your trip with all despatch, and land them upon the west coast of Ireland.”
“What! among those murdering barbarians? I’ll have to be careful that we don’t get our own throats cut,” says Dalton. For at that time the west coast of Ireland was an Ultima Thule regarded with horror by all Jack tars, no wrecked sailor ever returning from it.
“Rendezvous,” he adds to Dalton, “at Flushing as soon as you have done your errand. Wait for me there.”
“But if you don’t return?”
“Then you’ll be captain of the Dover Lass. I shall come back, though. But don’t as you value my life, and the lives of those poor devils with me, let any of this Spanish crew, the captain least of all, get out of your hands, until you have consigned them to the O’Brien’s, O’Toole’s, or some wild murdering Irish chief, who’ll enslave them, and from whose savage clutches there will be as little hope of escape as blackamoors stolen from Africa have in the Indies!”
“Trust me for that. No garlic-eating Don of them ever sees his mother again. If there’s a chance of a [[136]]Spanish man-of-war catching me—over they go,” says Dalton, his gesture is very suggestive.
Then the Dover Lass shapes her course for the Hebrides, taking the northern route to Ireland to avoid any chance of encountering Spanish armed vessels.