The doctor really looked scared.
“Man!” he said, “are ye takin’ leave o’ your wuts? There, tak’ a hold o’ my hand and dinna try to frighten folk. There’s never a ‘she’ near ye.”
“It is she, I tell you,” cried Rory again; “take the glass and look in under the land yonder, and heading for Stromsoe. It is the pirate herself,—the pirate we fought in the Snowbird. Hurrah! hurrah!”
Chapter Nine.
Mount Hekla—The Great Geyser—A Narrow Escape—The Search for the Pirate—McBain’s Little “Ruse de Guerre”—The Battle Begun.
“That puts quite another complexion on the matter,” said Dr Sandy McFlail, with a sigh of relief, when Rory explained to him that he had spied the pirate, “quite another complexion, though, for the time bein’ ye glowered sae like a warlock that I did think ye had lost your reason; so give me the glass, and I’ll e’en take a look at her mysel’.
“Eh! sirs,” he continued, with the telescope at his eye, “but she is a big ship, and a bonnie ship. But, Rory boy, just catch a hold o’ my coat-tails, and I’ll feel more secure like. I wouldn’t wish to go heels o’er head out o’ the car. A fine big ship indeed—square-rigged forward and schooner-rigged aft; a vera judeecious arrangement.”
“Now,” cried Rory, “the sooner we are landed on old mother earth the better. Bend on to the valve halyards, De Vere. Down with her.”