“It’s to go to the other schooner,” cried Mark, excitedly. “They’ll take Dance and Grote prisoners too. Do you think you could reach the tow-rope, Tom?”
The sailor looked out from the little window and upward.
“No, sir,” he said, despondently. “Too high up, and that chap’s waiting to give me one on the head.”
“Yes; that will not do,” cried Mark, as the splash of the schooner’s boat in the water was heard, and the voice of the skipper shouting some directions.
Mark stood hesitating for a few moments, and then, acting upon a sudden thought, he placed his hands to his mouth, reached out of the cabin window, and shouted with all his might:
“Schooner ahoy! Coxswain!”
“Ay, ay, sir,” cried Dance from the bows of the towed vessel, just as the boat with five men in glided into sight close to her right.
“Danger! Prisoners!”
“Hi! yew stop that!” cried a voice from the boat, and a man stood up and pointed a pistol at the midshipman.
“Ay, ay, sir,” cried Dance.