“Ay, ay, sir,” came back dismally. “I’ve got us out o’ reach o’ that pig o’ ballast.”
“But, Tom,” cried Mark, excitedly, “what does it mean? Where’s Mr Russell?”
“Somewheres underneath you, sir. I think you’re a-sitting on him.”
“There’s someone lying here,” cried Mark.
“Yes, sir, several someuns,” said Tom Fillot. “Oh, my poor head!”
“But you don’t tell me what it all means,” cried Mark, angrily.
“Didn’t know as it wanted no telling on, sir. Thought you knowed.”
“But I know nothing. I was roused up, dragged out of the cabin, and thrown down into the boat.”
“Yes, sir; so was we, and not very gently, nayther.”
“Then the—” began Mark, but he did not finish. “That’s it, sir. You’ve hit it. The Yankee captain come back from up the river somewhere in his boat as quiet as you please, and the first I knowed on it was that it was dark as pitch as I leaned my back against the bulwarks, and stood whistling softly, when—bang, I got it on the head, and as I went down three or four of ’em climbed aboard. ‘What’s that? You there, Fillot?’ I heered in a dull sort o’ way, and then the poor lufftenant went down with a groan, and same moment I hears a scrufflin’ forrard and aft, cracks o’ the head, and falls. Minute arter there was a row going on in the fo’c’s’le. I heered that plain, sir, and wanted to go and help my mates, but when I was half up, seemed as if my head begun to spin like a top, and down I went again, and lay listening to the row below. There was some fighting, and I heered Joe Dance letting go awful. My, he did swear for a minute, and then he was quiet, and there was a bit o’ rustling, and I hears a voice say, ‘Guess that’s all. Show the light.’ Then there seemed to me to be a light walking about the deck with a lot o’ legs, and I knowed that they were coming round picking up the pieces. Sure enough they was, sir, and they pitched all the bits of us overboard into a boat alongside; and I knowed we hadn’t half kept our watch, and the Yankee skipper had come back and took his schooner.”