“Ay, ay, sir,” cried the carpenter, and he drew himself up with his rifle-butt resting on his bare toes.
“There, Fitz,” said Poole, grinning with delight; “you can’t go back to your old tea-kettle of a gunboat and say that we didn’t take care of you.”
“Such nonsense!” cried Fitz, flushing. “Any one would think that I was a child. I don’t see anything to laugh at,” and as he spoke the boy turned sharply from Poole’s mirthful face to look searchingly at the carpenter, who was in the act of wiping a smile from his lips.
“Oh, no, sir, I warn’t a-laughing,” the man said, with his eyes twinkling. “What you see’s a hecho like, or what you call a reflection from Mr Poole’s physiomahogany. This ’ere’s a nice game, aren’t it! I’m sorry for those pore chaps aboard, and our two mates in the boat. They’ll be missing all the fun.”
“Why, Poole,” cried Fitz suddenly, “I forgot all about them. I suppose they’ll have gone back to the schooner.”
“Not they!”
“Then you think the enemy’s captured them?”
“That I don’t,” replied Poole. “They’ll have run the boat in, according to orders, in amongst the shade, and be lying there as snug as can be, waiting till they’re wanted.”
“Well, I don’t know so much about that, Mr Poole, sir,” put in the carpenter. “Strikes me that as sure as nails don’t hold as tight as screws unless they are well clinched, when we have driven off these here varmin, and go to look for them in that ’ere boat we shall find them gone.”
“What do you mean?” cried Poole.