He said nothing further, and while he sat still with a hopeless face in black dejection, the mate, who did not know all that he was doing, took his affairs in hand. Coming forward along the deck he stopped before them with a packet in his hand.
"Take the gig ashore, and put these letters in the post," he said. "Wait for half-an-hour, and then if you see no sign of the skipper, come off again. You can take Cally with you."
The lads were almost desperate, or they would not have done a foolish thing, for Appleby did not stand up.
"It's not our watch, sir," he said.
The mate swung round and looked at him with a little glint in his eyes. "You're talking again," he said. "If you're not on board the gig inside five minutes, I'll have my answer ready for you."
Appleby rose up and touched his cap sardonically, but Niven was sullen. "Very well, sir, but the gig's too big for us, and I don't know that we can pull her back against the breeze," he said.
The mate moved a little nearer with an unpleasant smile in his face. "The stream will sweep you off the land unless you do, and it should help you to pull if you remember it," he said. "That reminds me, I want Cally for something else."
Appleby saw that he had made a mistake again. Since he had spoken to the skipper their persecutor had avoided violence and harassed them with a vindictive cunning which left no room for any objection that would not put them in the wrong. So far speech had only lost them the help of a third hand who could have taken his turn at an oar and steered for them, and he grasped Niven fiercely by the shoulder lest he should answer as he turned away. The gig lay astern, and in another minute or two they had climbed down into her, and casting off stepped the mast and ran up the little sail. The wind would carry them ashore, but the gig though light was nearly twenty feet long, and, while they could row tolerably well, both knew it would cost them a strenuous effort to pull her off again.
"He's a pig and a beast!" said Niven, hoarse with rage, as he sat aft with the tiller in his hand while the boat swung over the little splashing sea. "She's not going to fetch the ship under sail coming back, and it will be no end of a fag to pull her, while I'm about done with handling those staysails all day already."
Appleby said nothing, but his face was very sombre as he slacked the sheet a little when a puff of spray flew over the weather gunwale, and the brine lapped perilously near the opposite one. He saw that the breeze was freshening, as an easterly wind often does at nightfall, and did not anticipate any pleasure in rowing back again.