“Oh,” said Joe cheerily, “we can watch these ’ere great smiling efts till then. They seem to be sailing about and watching us as if they’d got some sort of an idea that they were to have us to eat by and by, which I don’t mean that they shall. And then there’ll be making the false starts. I think, sir, as we’ll make one or two, as if we was half afraid to make a dash for it, and that’ll draw their fire.”
“But suppose they hit us, Joe,” cried Rodd.
“Oh, we must chance that, sir. They can’t hit us. They couldn’t hit a hay-stack in a ten-acre field; let alone a boat being pulled hard across stream. That’ll be all right.”
And so it proved when Joe Cross put his tactics into force, making the men row out into the river, and then ordering them to lie on their oars, while Rodd watched the schooner’s decks and announced that some of the men were busy about the guns and all crowding to the bulwarks to watch the proceedings of the boat.
Then a feint was made in one direction, then in another, and at last Joe stood up in the stern, to begin gesticulating to the men, as if bullying them into making a bold dash to row swiftly down as near the farther shore as they could go.
A minute later two puffs of smoke from different vessels shot out into the clear evening air, the balls ricochetting from the water in each case a few yards away. Then, with the men pulling as hard as ever they could, the boat’s head was swung round, and rowing diagonally across the stream they made for the shelter of the shore from which they had come, the sail was hoisted, filled, and away they went till they were right round the bend and the anchored schooners were out of sight.
“There, Mr Rodd, sir, what did I tell you?” cried Joe triumphantly. “I knew they couldn’t hit us. Chaps like them ought never to be allowed to handle a gun.”
“Well, my man,” said the doctor, “if the rest of your plan will only succeed like this we shall achieve a victory.”
“Nay, nay, sir; only a little boat action. There, my lads, now we’ll have a rest. They’re sure to think we have gone right up the river.”
“But they may send boats to follow us,” suggested Rodd.