“Well done, my lads,” said the middy; “that was right. But what did you do then?”
“I hystes up the grapnel, sir, and Harry Lang there gets an oar over the side.”
“Well?”
“Well, sir, then a Yankee sort of a chap as seemed to be the head on ’em leans hisself up again’ a bush and rests his gun upon a bough of one of the trees on the bank, and he says to me, he says, as he looks along the barrel, ‘Now, you sir,’ he says, ‘just you run that boat’s nose into this here bank, and tidy quick too, ’fore I draws this here trigger.’
“‘All right, sir,’ I says, and I shoves another oar over the side; and as soon as he sees me do that, quite easy like, he lowers down his gun—rifle, I think it was—and turns his head to say something to the chaps who was with him.
“‘Easy, messmate,’ I says then; ‘get her head straight first,’ making believe as Harry warn’t doing right. The ’Merican chap was just turning round then, but I sees my chance, and I whispers to Harry, ‘Up stream, lad, for all you’re worth.’ ‘Right you are,’ he says, and my word! sir, we did take hold of the water and put our backs into it, ’gainst stream as it was; and as I pulled I was all the time wishing as hard as I could that you’d got hold of the rudder lines so as to steer, sir, and leave us nothing to do but pull while you kept the boat’s head right in the middle of the river. ‘Here, hi, there! What are you doing? Pull ashore, or—’ He steps to the same tree again and rests his gun on the bough and takes aim, while I thinks to myself what a pity it was that we hadn’t turned the boat’s head down stream.”
“You said arterwards, messmate, as that would ha’ been like leaving the first luff and the lads in the lurch,” said the other boat-keeper.
“So I did, messmate; and so it would,” said the narrator.
“But he didn’t fire at you?” cried Murray eagerly.
“Didn’t fire at us, sir?” said the man. “But he just did, while we pulled with all our might.”