“What arms are there in the boat?” asked Ned, lying on his oar for a moment.
The negroes produced their store of weapons, and laid them down for our inspection. It was a sorry enough lot.
Two extremely old-fashioned pistols, one fairly effective cutlass (used by the negroes for cutting their way through the dense jungles), and two rusty and jagged daggers. These constituted our armoury.
As we were gazing at them rather hopelessly, and demanding ammunition for the pistols, “Mother Bunch” produced a weighty-looking club, armed with metal spikes, from some corner of the stern-sheets, and with many grins and exclamations of satisfaction, whirled it around her head in a bellicose fashion.
“Bravo, my shegro brave and true!” shouted Ned in great delight. “We’ll let you go for some of them swabs and brain ’em by-and-by, jiggered if we don’t. Amazons aren’t in the running when you’re out on the war-path, I reckon!”
“She is more likely to capsize the boat than anything else if it comes to a scrimmage,” said the gunner grimly.
It was fortunate that “Mother Bunch” did not understand this ungallant remark, or Mr. Triggs’s head might have made acquaintance with the Amazonian club!
How we longed for a little breeze to help us on our way and cool the air! Our saturated clothes had dried in the hot sun; but our exertions made us perspire so freely that it seemed probable that before long they would be in much the same state again.
Still we made the unwieldy old boat move; we could take that much credit to ourselves.
I glanced for the twentieth time at the brig. She was slowly but surely gaining on us, and Ned had been quite right about the boats—two of them had her in tow. How many sweeps she was able to utilize I could not tell, as she was at least two miles distant. I wondered how far her guns could carry, and whether, when the pirates found that there was no chance of a breeze, they would not detach the boats in chase of us.