“There’s no mistake,” said the lieutenant; “and it means this, that you will have to share the captain’s anger and disappointment over my failure.”
“I? But why?”
“For not catching the gang of scoundrels I was driving down before me. Oh, Munday, you ought to have taken that boat!”
“But how was I to know, man?”
“Don’t stop to talk. Run on back and find the lugger if you can, while I keep on down the main stream. We may overtake the wretches after all, and if either of us sees the enemy in the offing of course we must pursue, even if it’s right out to sea.”
“But the captain—the Seafowl? We must report what has happened.”
“I will, of course, in passing. You, if you come up first, need only say that there is a nest of slavers up the river, and that I have had a sharp fight. If the captain has seen the lugger, tell him it is full of a gang of scoundrels who have fired upon us, and that the vessel ought to be sunk.”
“You had better tell him all this yourself, Anderson,” said the second lieutenant, in a whisper that the men could not hear, “and I wouldn’t say a word about my missing the lugger on the way, for he’s in a towering rage, and will only be too glad to drop on to me for what I really could not help.”
“No, I suppose not,” said the first lieutenant good-humouredly; “but you might take your share of his ill-humour.”
“But it is all on account of your being so long away.”