“Then why are you here, sir?”
“That fisherman chap told me you said I was to go forward, sir, as he’d take a spell now, ready for running her round the head into the bay.”
“Where is that man?”
There was no reply, and more quickly than he had moved for months, the lieutenant trotted aft, and looked over the stern for the fisherman’s boat.
It was gone.
Chapter Eighteen.
Lieutenant brough went into a fit of passion. Not a noisy, sea-going fit of passion, full of loud words, such as are not found in dictionaries, but a rising and falling, swelling and collapsing, silent fit of passion, as moment by moment he realised more and more that he had been victimised, and that he had been sent forward to quiet the men so as to give the big rough fellow an opportunity to creep over into his boat and cut the painter by which it was made fast, and let it glide away on the tide till it was safe to thrust an oar over astern, and, using it like a fish does its tail, paddle softly away close under the rocks to some hole, or perhaps round into the bay.
For a moment the lieutenant thought of manning the boats and sending in pursuit, but he knew that such an act would be madness; and, accepting his position, he suddenly gave the order for four men to go into each boat, and begin to tow the cutter, while a few of the crew put out the sweeps to get her a little farther from the cliff to catch the breeze.