About two bells in the morning watch, everyone was suddenly aroused by the hound’s deep baying. All hands rushed to arms at once, prepared to repel boarders. But no attack was made, and no sound was audible to human ear, so the skipper concluded it must have been Tootaker, the savage, trying to make his escape.
“He can’t, though,” he added; “not if he were the devil. Sailors’ knots and plenty of them!”
The only arms these savages possessed were knives and ugly spears, which they could throw with great precision.
The sun rose in another hour’s time, and, after breakfast, wood was got up from below and a barricade was built around the quarter-deck. The saloon was provisioned, and all the other hatches were battened down. They were now in a position to stand a siege, if need were.
Luck was in their favour, for they noticed two canoes beached near by, and Stransom, the skipper, with Johnnie, swam over the creek and took possession of them. There was a shot-hole in the gunwale of each, so no doubt those canoes had formed part of the hostile fleet. The paddles were in both.
“The natives,” said Stransom, “must have jumped overboard and left these.”
First the prisoner was taken on board, and so well was he treated that he told the skipper he never wanted to leave the ship any more, for if he returned his people would cook him alive, then gobble him all up, and lick their lips afterwards. He was a well-formed man, this savage, with a high skull and somewhat full lips, but most intelligent eyes. He wore only one garment, of coarse hair stuff. But Peggy liked him from the first, and it seemed to delight the child to play and sing to him.
Tootaker glared at her with his black eyes and said, “Oo! oo! Yum! yum!” but whether he was enraptured with the music, or was thinking how nice Peggy would be to eat, I cannot say for certain. “Yum! yum!” means so much.
The two canoes came in very handy, and that forenoon the ship’s chief water-tank was filled.
At first the blood-hound was very suspicious of Tootaker, and Tootaker looked upon the dog as some fearful wild beast. But they soon became friends.