“Well, nobody said it warn’t, did they?” cried Waters, who was regularly out of temper now.
“No,” growled Tom Tully, “on’y wishes I was aboard, I do.”
“Then you ain’t going till you’ve found your orsifer, my lad.”
“Hah!” said Tom Tully, oracularly. “Shouldn’t wonder if he ar’n’t desarted ’cause the skipper give him such a setting down this morning.”
“Now just hark at this here chap,” cried the gunner, appealing to the others. “He’d just go and do such a dirty thing hisself, and so he thinks every one else would do the same. Tom Tully, I’m ’bout ashamed o’ you. I shouldn’t ha’ thought as a fellow with such a pigtail as you’ve got to your headpiece would say such a thing of his orsifer.”
“Then what call’s he got to go and desart us for like this here, messmet?” growled Tom Tully. “I don’t want to say no hard things o’ nobody, but here’s the skin off one o’ my heels, and my tongue’s baked; and what I says is, where is he if he ar’n’t gone?”
That was a poser; and as after another short search there was a second gun fired from the cutter, and a boat was seen to put off and come towards them, there was nothing for them but to go down to the water and get into the boat, after Billy Waters had taken bearings, as he called it, of the place where the young officer had left them, setting up stones for marks,—which, however, through the deceptive nature and similarity of the coast in one part to another, were above half a mile from the true spot,—and suffer themselves to be rowed aboard.
“The skipper’s in a fine temper,” said one of the crew. “Where’s Muster Leigh?”
“Ah! that’s just what I want to know,” said Waters, ruefully. “He’ll be down upon me for losing on him—just as if I took him ashore like a dog tied to a string. How did you get the cutter off?”
“Easy as a glove,” was the reply. “We just took out the little anchor and dropped it over, and when the tide come up hauled on it a bit, and she rode out as easy as a duck. But he’s been going on savage because Muster Leigh didn’t come back. Has he desarted?”