“But I mean shot—wounded.”
“Yah! no. He couldn’t hit a hay-stack, sir. I’m all right.”
“Let me try,” said Dick Bannock, “while he’s loading his pea-shooter.”
The man mounted the table, and began to drag at the canvas and tangle of rope, and blocks, but there was no attack made upon him, and he struggled on till he was obliged to give up with a sigh of despair.
“Can’t you do it?” cried Mark.
“No, sir, nohow. Wants someone on deck with a hax.”
“Let’s try the window again,” cried Mark; but a few minutes decided that. Hampered by the great sail hanging down, there was no exit there without cutting a way through, while those who tried would have been quite at the mercy of the men on deck.
Back at the door, they hammered and beat and thrust, trying all they knew without avail, till suddenly, as a cheer was heard alongside, one of the pieces of wood which wedged them in so securely gave way a little, then a little more, and with the tramping of feet increasing overhead, the door flew open.
Mark bounded out, but was driven back into the cabin by Bob Howlett, who forced his way in with his men, his first words shouted in the dark cabin—doubly dark to those who entered from the glaring Afric sunshine—silencing Tom Fillot and his comrades, who shrank back puzzled at first, then full of mirth and enjoyment at the midshipman’s mistake.
For, seeing in the blackened object whom he had helped to drive back into the cabin a foe of a calibre suited to his size, and one whom he could tackle, Bob Howlett shouted to his men—“Cut ’em down if they resist,” and then to Mark. “Now you slave-catching dog, surrender, or this goes through you like a spit.”