“There’s lots o’ difference, my lad. We can’t go aboard without him. But where is he?”
“Having a caulk somewhere,” said Tully gruffly; “and I on’y wish I were doing of that same myself. If we stop here much longer we shall be cooked like herrings. It’s as hot as hot.”
“I tell you he wouldn’t desert us and go to sleep,” said the gunner stubbornly. “Mr Leigh’s a lad as would stick to his men like pitch to a ball o’ oakum.”
“Then why don’t he?” growled Tom Tully in an ill-used tone. “What does he go and sail away from conwoy for?”
“He couldn’t have got up the cliffs,” mused the gunner; “’cause there don’t seem to be no way, and he couldn’t have gone more to west’ard, ’cause we must have seen him. There ain’t been no boats along shore, and he can’t have gone back to the cutter. I say, my lads, we’ve been and gone and got ourselves into a reg’lar mess. What’s the skipper going to say when he sees us? You see we can’t tell him as the youngster’s fell overboard.”
“No,” growled Tom Tully; “’cause there ar’n’t no overboard for him to fall. I’m right, I know; he’s having a caulk.”
“Tell yer he ain’t,” roared Waters fiercely; “and if any one says again as my young orsifer’s doing such a thing as to leave his men in the lurch and go to sleep on a hot day like this, he’ll get my fist in his mouth.”
“Sail ho!” cried one of the men; and looking in the indicated direction, there was the cutter afloat once more, and sailing towards them, quite a couple of miles away, and as they looked there was a little puff of white smoke from her side, and a few seconds after a dull report.
“Look at that now;” cried Billy Waters, “there’s the skipper got some one meddling with my guns. That’s that Jack Brown, that is; and he knows no more about firing a gun than he do ’bout Dutch. There was a dirty sort of a shot.”
“That’s a signal, that is, for us to come aboard,” growled Tom Tully.