“I don’t think that hole goes in far, Mr Raystoke,” whispered the master. “There’s no echo like, and it sounds smothered.” Then aloud,—
“Now, then, is it surrender? Oh, very well; I’ve got some nice little round messengers to send in after you.”
He drew a pistol from his belt and cocked it, winking at Archy as he did so. “Now, then, once—twice—fire!”
He pointed the mouth of the pistol downward, and drew the trigger, and in the semi-darkness below the overhanging brambles and clematis there was a dull flash, the report sounded smothered, and the place was filled with the dank, heavy-scented smoke.
“There’s precious little room in there,” whispered the master. “If there’d been much of it, we should have heard the sound go rolling along instead of coming back like a slap in the face. Here, one of you, reload that. You, Dick, follow me. If they show fight, you come on next, bo’s’n, with the whole of your boat’s crew.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Hi! In there. Do you surrender?”
There was not a sound, and, after a momentary pause, the master spat in his fist, gripped his cutlass, went down on all fours, after driving his hat on tightly, and crawled into the hole, followed by Dick.
“Keep a cheery heart on it, lad,” said one of the men just before to Dick. “We’ll fetch you out and bury you at sea.”
Dick drove his elbow into the man’s chest for an answer, grinned as he felt the point of his cutlass, and dived into the hole, while the boatswain and his men stood waiting eagerly, ready to plunge forward at the first sound of a scuffle.