Chapter Forty Five.
Too good to be true.
It was rather a queer position occupied by the two lads, seated astride the bowsprit like children playing at horses—sea- or river-horses, in this case, for the swift current was running beneath them.
Poole looked hard at Fitz, his sharp eyes seeming to plunge into those of his companion as if he read his very thoughts, while as Fitz returned the gaze his look became timid and shrinking; a curious feeling of nervousness and regret attacked him, and the next minute he was wishing that instead of planning out a suggestion by which he would help these filibusters, he had kept silence and not begun a proposal which he felt to be beneath his dignity as a young officer of the Queen.
“Well,” said Poole at last, in a tone of voice which added to Fitz’s chill; “what is it?” Fitz remained silent.
“Well, out with it! What’s the scheme?” Still Fitz did not speak, and Poole went on—“It ought to be something good to make you so cocksure. I have gone over it all again and again, turned it upside down and downside up, and I can’t get at anything one-half so good as old Chips’s cock-and-bull notions. I suppose you are cleverer than I am, and if you are, so much the better, for it’s horrible to be shut up like this, and I feel as if I’d rather wait for a good wind, clap on all sail, and make a dash for it, going right ahead for the gunboat as if you meant to run her down, and when we got very close, give the wheel a spin and shoot by her. They’d think we were coming right on to her, and it might scare the crew so that they wouldn’t be able to shoot straight till we got right by. And then—”
“Yes,” said Fitz; “and then perhaps when they had got over the scare they’d shoot straight enough. And suppose they did before they were frightened. What about the first big shell that came aboard?”
“Ah, yes, I didn’t think of that,” said Poole. “But anyhow, that’s the best I can do. I’ve thought till my head is all in a buzz, and I shan’t try to think any more. I suppose, then, that yours is a better idea than that.”
“Ye–es. Rather.”