“Does he? For a penny he doesn’t mean to let them come on board. Why, look at Butters; he’s lying down on the deck.”
“Yes,” whispered Fitz; “to be in shelter if they fire while he’s working the spokes. Look, the sails are filling once again.”
“It’s too soon,” whispered Poole hoarsely. “They’ll see from the gunboat and fire, and if they do—”
“They will miss us, my boy,” said the skipper, who had approached unseen. “Lie down, my lads—every one on deck.”
“And you too, father,” whispered Poole. “They may hit you with a bullet.”
“Obey orders,” said the skipper sternly. “The captain must take his chance.”
Crack, crack, crack, and whizz, whizz, whizz!
The officer of the cutter saw through the manoeuvre at last, and fired at the retreating schooner’s skipper, while a minute later, as the Silver Teal was gliding rapidly into a bank of gloom that seemed to come like so much solid blackness down the vale, there was a bright flash as of lightning, a deep boom as of thunder, which shook the very air, and a roar of echoes dying right away, while the great stars overhead now stood out rapidly one by one in the purple velvet arch overhead.