“I think you are right, Baldock. It might be the peak of one of the native lateen sails, but I think it is too far away for that. It is about the direction we might expect the schooner to come from. She was more to the north-west when we saw her last, but to get round the Turks she would have to bear either one way or the other, and if she ran to the south that is just about where she would be on her way back. Hullo! that was a near shave; we had better get off this, Baldock.”
“Are you hit, sir?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it is of any consequence; it is in the arm, but as I can move it all right, it is only through the flesh.”
Half a dozen guns had flashed out in reply to the shot, which had been fired from a distance of less than a hundred yards, the man having crept through the bushes unseen. Martyn’s coat was taken off and his arm bandaged at once.
“It is rather foolish to expose yourself like that, Captain Martyn,” Mr. Beveridge said as he came up. “Your life is too valuable to us all to be risked in that way.”
“It was rather foolish,” Martyn laughed; “but I thought the fellows were out of range, and did not give them credit for enterprise. Anyhow there is no great harm done. I think we have made out the schooner, sir, and it is worth getting a ball through one’s arm to know that she is on her way back.”
“Do you feel sure it is her?”
“Well, I can say that it is not a square top-sail; that is certain, and it must either be her gaff top-sail or the peak of a lateen sail of one of these native craft; but I think it is the schooner. If it is, we sha’n’t be long before we can make out her fore-top gallant-sail. No native craft carries a lateen and anything like a square sail.”
“If it is the schooner, how far is she off, do you think?”