"That will we," I endorsed him.
My great-uncle eyed me a thought quizzically.
"You are, it seems, subject to change of opinion, Robert," he remarked. "By all means let Moira remain with us. I daresay she'll be none the worse for a wetting."
But the storm held off throughout our morning-long chase down the east coast of the island and then out to sea to herd the Walrus in from the north. Coupeau hulled the miserable craft again and again, and shot away her foretopmast; but she steadily clawed offshore and made desperate attempts to steal ahead of us and win a clear path before the wind, and when, toward noon, the breeze died completely the positions of the two vessels were practically the same as they had been from the beginning of the cat-and-mouse game that Murray played.
The Royal James, by nimbler handling, had gained in the last hour, and was more than a cannon-shot to the north-west of the Walrus, with the northernmost of the island's chain of hills—the one the pirates called the Foremast Hill—almost due southeast of us. If the wind sprang up again in anything like the same quarter the Walrus was fast in Murray's trap. She would have the choice of two alternatives: She could stand on and fight, with the practical certainty of destruction for all hands, or she could drive ashore, in which case the crew might take to the woods, with every prospect of eluding pursuit, unless Murray made a determined effort to comb the island's craggy recesses. After the long-range battering they had received all morning, on top of the hammering in the action in the dark, there was not much doubt that the Walrus' disorderly crew would take the decision into their own hands and choose the latter as offering a fair chance of life, no matter how circumscribed.
The helmsman had just turned the hour-glass, which lay beside the compass in the hooded box in front of the steering-wheel, when a shout came from Martin, who was half-way up the main-rigging, sweeping the horizon with a glass. My great-uncle had been pondering the desirability of getting out the boats and undertaking to tow the James within range of the long eighteens, and he called back—
"Is it wind?"
"Aye, aye, sir," roared Martin—and there was no mildness now in the old fellow's tones. "There's the —— ——est blow o' wind as ever came out o' the —— —— bowels o' the sky or I'm a —— —— swab as ever was."
He tumbled from the ratlines and ran aft to the break of the poop, his face lifted earnestly in appeal.
"Best let me lay an ax to the mizzen, sir," he called.