“No trifling, man. For your own sake, obey my orders. Seize this lad, and then make sail for the nearest British port.”
The boatswain took off his cap and scratched his head, looking at the boys in a puzzled way, while Poole made no further resistance, but resigned himself to being held, as he kept the pistol well behind his back.
“Do you hear me, men?” shouted Fitz, his heart sinking with despair the while, as he noted the smiling looks of every face before him, and felt what a miserable fiasco he had made.
“Oh yes, I can hear you, sir,” said the boatswain. “I’d be precious deaf if I didn’t; but you’re giving rather a large order, taking a lot on yourself now as the skipper’s lying in dock. Any one would think as you had got a gunboat’s well-manned cutter lying alongside, and I don’t see as it is. What was that there shot I heard?”
“I blew the lock off the cabin-door by my father’s orders,” cried Poole. “We were locked in.”
“Ho!” said the boatswain. “Then this ’ere’s been what they used to call aboard a ship I was in, a hen-coop de main. I don’t quite exactly know what it means, but it’s something about shutting up prisoners in a cage. But don’t you think, young gentleman, you have been making a big mistake? But oh, all right—here’s the skipper hisself coming on deck.”
Fitz turned sharply towards the companion-hatch, to see the head and shoulders of the skipper as he stood there holding on by the combings, and swaying to and fro, looking very ill and weak. His voice, too, sounded feeble as he said huskily, addressing the boatswain—
“Is there any boat alongside, Butters?”
“I arn’t seen one, sir,” replied the boatswain.
“Any cruiser within sight?”