Chapter Two.
Bravo, Boy!
The dim evening gave place to a dark night. The Tonans had for some two or three hours been stealing along very slowly not far from land, and that something important was on the way was evident from the captain’s movements, and the sharp look-out that was being kept up, and still more so from the fact that no lights were shown.
The gunboat’s cutter had been swung out ready for lowering down at a moment’s notice, the armed crew stood waiting, and one man was in the stern-sheets whose duty it was to look after the lantern, which was kept carefully shaded.
Fitz, who was the readiest of the ready, had long before noted with intense interest the fact that they showed no lights, and his interest increased when the lieutenant became so far communicative that he stood gazing out through the darkness side by side with his junior, and said softly—
“I am afraid we shall miss her, my lad. She’ll steal by us in the darkness, and it will all prove to be labour in vain.”
Fitz waited to hear more, but no more came, for the lieutenant moved off to join the captain.
“I wish he wouldn’t be so jolly mysterious,” said the midshipman to himself. “I am an officer too, and he might have said a little more.”
But it was all waiting, and no farther intercourse till close upon eight bells, when Fitz, feeling regularly tired out, said to himself—
“Bother! I wish I hadn’t asked leave to go. I should have been comfortably asleep by now.”