“They deceived me, captain,” said Briscoe.
“So they did me, sir, at the first squint. I thought we were in for a scrimmage, and that before long I should be cutting up sticking-plaster and putting it on. Two fine old sticks of timber those, squire, and they must have come down some fierce falls to be stripped of their boughs like that. Now, then, are they going to foul our cable and send us adrift or will they slip quietly by?”
Brace felt so annoyed and disgusted that he could find no words for the moment, and he stood there watching the two old tree-trunks coming closer and closer, till the foremost just missed the cable, and directly after touched the brig’s bows with a slow, dull, heavy impact which made her jar from end to end.
“Bah!” ejaculated the lad, in his disgust, and, turning away, he left the deck, glad of the excuse of going down into the cabin to see after his brother.
But the second mate was waiting for him when he came up, ready with a bantering laugh.
“I say, sir,” he whispered, “aren’t you a bit too eager for a fight?”
Brace said nothing, but, mortified by his mistake, walked right aft, to stand leaning over the stern, gazing down into the black waters as they came rushing and whispering from beneath the vessel, eddying about the rudder, and suggesting wonders of the mysterious monsters that might even then be gazing up at him with glassy eyes, meditating a spring and a snatch to seize and drag him down to their lair, as he had seen the two savages snatched from life not many hours before.
“Horrible!” he muttered, half-aloud, as he shrank away with a shudder.
“What’s horrible?” said the familiar voice of the American behind him; “being chaffed by the skipper? Don’t be so thin-skinned.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that,” said Brace frankly. “I was slightly annoyed for the moment, but it was only a mistake.”