Presently Murray descended the brig's side with an agility which put me to shame and took his seat in the stern sheets. Darby swarmed down like a monkey and ensconced himself beside us in the bow. Silver was slung over in the bight of a rope, and the last of the crew tumbled after him, one upon the other's heels. Oars were thrust out, and we pulled rapidly toward the Royal James, wallowing in the trough of the sea, a quarter-mile away. The Walrus, foaming up under a cloud of canvas, was almost as near, and on our weather board.
Darby crouched at my knees, drinking in the spectacle.
"Oh, the tall ships, Master Bob! Look to the water dripping from their bows, and the lordly way they stand up like the towers of churches or maybe a castle. Did ye ever see the beat of it? And the guns that are like to the grinning teeth in an ogre's head!"
Boom! The roar of an explosion behind us was as sharp as the smack of an open hand. I turned my head. So did the others. Murray was looking back, too, and the rowers rested on their oars.
A cloud of smoke jetted up from the brig's hatches. She heeled over to starboard as we watched, gave a quivering lurch and commenced to slide under by the head. We could hear the slap of the sails as they struck the waves. In two minutes she was gone.
"That was well-contrived, Silver," remarked my great-uncle. "'Sdeath, but you are a man of parts. Give way, lads!"
He nodded the length of the boat to me.
"I trust you perceive the significance of that, Nephew Robert. A certain young man, we will say, disappears from New York. A certain brig disappears simultaneously. Some might go so far as to associate the two disappearances. Frigates put to sea in search of a certain brig—but the brig is no more."
The men at the oars laughed loudly, and I made no answer. What could I say? I felt very hopeless.
The bulwarks of the James were lined with heads and faces as we pulled under her counter and made fast, and even at that distance the complexity of her crew was apparent. I saw Portuguese, Finns, Scandinavians, French and English cheek by jowl with negroes, Moors, Indians and slant-eyed yellow men. But what impressed me most was the absolute silence which greeted us, a silence all the more impressive because the wind carried to our ears the bedlam of shouts, cheers, oaths and imprecations with which the Walrus was receiving Bones' boat several hundred yards away.