“Hopeful? Yes,” cried Panton. “We shall do it.”
“If we are not interrupted,” said Drew.
“If we are,” said the mate, “we must make a fight for it. There’s the watch up in the top to give us warning, and the arms all lie ready. At the first alarm everyone will make for the brig’s deck, and I daresay we shall beat our visitors off.”
“But when we get farther away?” said Drew.
“Don’t let’s meet troubles before they’re half way,” said the mate, smiling. “Perhaps the blacks may never come again. Let’s hope not.”
“Amen,” said Panton, and then everything was forgotten in the business on hand, all trusting to the careful watch kept from the brig, and working like slaves to get the capstan fixed to the bars driven in between crevices in the bed rock, while stays were fixed to blocks of coral, which lay here and there as they had been swept by the earthquake wave.
The consequence was, that by noon, when the great heat had produced exhaustion, the capstan had been moved three times, and, thanks to the level ground, the lugger had glided steadily nearly as many cables’ lengths nearer the sea.
“Do it?” cried the mate, suddenly, as they sat resting and waiting till the men had finished their mid-day meal. “Of course we shall do it.”
“Well,” said Oliver, laughing, “no one said we shouldn’t.”
“No,” said the mate, “but someone might have thought so.”