“Of course, of course,” interrupted Brown; “Mr Delamere it is! I knowed that I knowed that voice of yours, sir. Here, you Joe, rouse and bitt, man; here’s the skipper come to life again. Half a minute, sir, and we’ll have a light. Joe, you lighted the ‘glim’ last; what did ye do wi’ the tinder-box?”
The two men were broad awake, out of their bunks, and bustling about almost before one could draw a breath, and the next moment they had lighted a lantern, in the dim glimmer of which they stood up side by side, saluting, as I stared into their faces scarcely able to credit such a stupendous piece of good fortune as the unexpected discovery of these two men, not only Englishmen, but actually members of my own late crew!
“My lads,” I exclaimed, as they stood before me at attention, “I am more glad than I can express, not only to find that you, like myself, have managed to escape with your lives, but also that you are here, aboard this felucca. For I fully intended to make the somewhat desperate attempt to escape in her single-handed; but the presence of you two men puts a very different complexion upon the affair. What I might have been wholly unable to accomplish alone, we three can together manage with ease. There is only one possible difficulty in our way: Can you tell me whether there happens to be any food and water aboard this craft?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Brown, “there’s both, for we’re fed every day out of the ship’s stores. There’s the scuttle butt on deck nearly full o’ water, and there’s grub down in the lazarette, but how much I don’t know.”
“Then let us go at once and ascertain,” said I, “for my escape may be discovered at any moment, and naturally this would be where they would first look for me. Mask that lantern with your jacket, one of you, and bring it along aft. Every second is now of importance to us.”
It took us but a few minutes to penetrate to the little vessel’s lazarette, where we found an ample supply of provisions of all kinds for a much larger crew than ourselves and a much longer voyage than we contemplated.
“Very well,” I remarked, as I ran my eye over the array of biscuit and flour barrels and the casks, some of which were branded “prime mess beef,” while others contained potatoes and sundry other commodities, “that will do; we shall certainly not starve during the next few days, whatever else may happen to us. Now clap on that hatch again, and we will go on deck, slip the cable, and make sail without further ado.”