Jerry vouchsafed no explanation of his ordered consultation until the three men in question had come down to the cabin where he and the boys waited. Mart detected something strange in the old man's manner, and the instant the men came down he saw an insolent expression on Birch's face that he did not understand. He was soon to understand it, however, with a good many other things.
"Now, comrades, what had best be done?" asked Jerry. "These here lads don't want us to make the Kanakas go down, and you don't want to go down neither. Our dynamite's gone, so I asks you again, what's to be done?"
Yorke leered with his twisted mouth.
"Take a rope's end to the Kanakas, Shark. Ain't you master aboard here?"
"Aye, that I am, Yorke, but owners is owners."
Jerry chuckled again, which disarmed Bob's anger. Mart was watching the four men anxiously. Their attitude puzzled him, for the seamen were undoubtedly insolent, but Jerry seemed to pay no attention; and the old quartermaster was usually a stickler for sea etiquette.
"Are you sure the Pirate Shark's down there, Jerry?" asked Bob suddenly. "Don't you think he's gone out to sea—"
"No, no, lad, he lives down there—eight fathom down, in the wreck, with the fish all around and us up above."
"He didn't go after the Kanakas," persisted Bob skeptically.
"You're right, lad, he didn't—'cause why, he knowed better, he did! He's waitin' till a diver goes down, lads—a real diver wi' the shoes an' helmet, as can't swim about like the Kanakas. I'll go down myself."