Another moment and the two miscreants had gone.
Chapter Three.
The sinking of the “Dolores.”
As the sound of the hanks travelling up the brig’s fore-topmast stay reached my ear I murmured cautiously to the carpenter.
“Is it safe for me to move now, Chips?”
“No, sir, no,” he replied, in a low, strained whisper; “don’t move a muscle for your life, Mr Grenvile, until I tell you, sir. The brig’s still alongside, and that unhung villain of a skipper’s standin’ on the rail, holdin’ on to a swifter, and lookin’ down on our decks as though, even now, he ain’t quite satisfied that his work is properly finished.”
At this moment I felt a faint breath of air stirring about me, and heard the small, musical lap of the tiny wavelets alongside as the new breeze arrived. The brig’s canvas and our own rustled softly aloft; and the cheeping of sheaves and parrals, the rasping of hanks, the flapping of canvas, and the sound of voices aboard the pirate craft gradually receded, showing that she was drawing away from us.
When, as I supposed, the brig had receded from us a distance of fully a hundred feet, the carpenter said, this time in his natural voice: