“Cowards! come on, cowards!” shouted the Malay fiercely, and he made a short rush from the mast, and two of the hatchet men retreated; but the Malay only laughed fiercely, and shrank back to get in shelter by the mast.
“We shall have to rush him or shoot him,” said the captain, rubbing his nose with pistol barrel. “Now then, you dog; surrender!” he roared; and lowering the pistol he fired at the Malay’s feet, the bullet splintering up the deck; but the fellow only laughed mockingly.
“We shall have to rush him,” growled the captain; “unless you can give him a dose of stuff, doctor, to keep him quiet.”
“Oh, yes; I can give him a dose that will quiet him for a couple of hours or so, but who’s to make him take it?”
“When we treed the big old man kangaroo who ripped up Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus,” drawled Jack Penny, who was looking on with his hands in his pockets, “I got up the tree and dropped a rope with a noose in it over his head. Seems to me that’s what you ought to do now.”
“Look’ye here,” cried the captain, “don’t you let your father call you fool again, youngster, because it’s letting perhaps a respectable old man tell lies. Tell you what, if you’ll shin up the shrouds, and drop a bit of a noose over his head while we keep him in play, I won’t say another word about your coming on board without leave.”
“Oh, all right! I don’t mind trying to oblige you, but you must mind he don’t cut it if I do.”
“You leave that to me,” cried the captain. “I’ll see to that. There, take that thin coil there, hanging on a belaying-pin.”
The tall thin fellow walked straight to the coil of thin rope, shook it out, and made a running noose at the end, and then, with an activity that surprised me, who began to feel jealous that this thin weak-looking fellow should have proved himself more clever and thoughtful than I was, he sprang into the shrouds, the Malay hardly noticing, evidently believing that the boy was going aloft to be safe. He looked up at him once, as Jack Penny settled himself at the masthead, but turned his attention fiercely towards us as the captain arranged his men as if for a rush, forming them into a semicircle.
“When I say ready,” cried the captain, “all at him together.”