“Now pull, my lads!” shouted the lieutenant; “pull all you know, and let’s get aboard. We’ve got to take that schooner before we’ve done.”
The men cheered, and pulled for the ship, from which came an answering cheer; but as Mark knelt down by the black he felt they had been a little too late, for the man lay there, in the moonlight, apparently quite dead. He had not stirred, neither did there seem to be the slightest pulsation as the boat was pulled alongside the Nautilus and run up to the davits, the graceful vessel beginning to glide once more rapidly in pursuit of the schooner, which had by the cruel manoeuvre placed a considerable distance between her and her pursuer.
“The black-hearted scoundrel!” cried the captain, as he stood looking down at the slave. “I’ll follow him to America but what I’ll have him. Well, doctor, all over with the poor fellow?”
“Oh no,” said the gentleman addressed; “he’s coming round.”
Almost as he spoke there was a faint quiver of the black’s eyelid, and a few minutes after he was staring wildly round at the white faces about him. The men set up a cheer, while a feeling of exultation such as he had never before experienced caused a strange thrill in the midshipman’s breast.
“He may thank you for his life, Vandean,” said the second lieutenant, “for we should never have seen him. Now I wonder whether that scoundrel will try the same game over again.”
“Safe to, Russell,” said the first lieutenant, gruffly. “Here, my lads, get the black below; give him a place to lie down. He’ll be all right in the morning, and a free man at any rate.”
“I say, Van,” said Bob Howlett, “aren’t we all making a precious lot of fuss about a nigger? Wonder whether you’d all make as much about me.”
“Go overboard and try,” said Mark.
“Eh? Thankye. Well, not to-night. I say, can’t that schooner sail?”