“Avast, there, with those guns! Load them again, lads, for we may have to fight once more in a few minutes. Here is the big ship running down upon us, and it looks very much as though she had taken the brig. Fill your topsail, and let draw the headsheets!”
Getting sufficient way upon the schooner, we tacked and stood toward the new-comers, passing close under the stern of the ship, with the intention of hailing her. But before I could get the trumpet to my lips, a figure sprang into the ship’s mizzen rigging, and Christie’s well-known voice hailed—
“Tern ahoy! is Mr Courtenay aboard?”
“Ay, ay,” I answered; “I am here, Mr Christie. What are you doing aboard there?”
“Why,” answered Christie, “I am in charge, you know. Seeing you busy with the brigantine, I thought I might as well try my luck at the same time; so I managed somehow to put the brig alongside this ship, and—and—well, we just took her!”
“Well done, Mr Christie!” I shouted; but before I could get out another word, my voice was drowned in the roaring cheer that the Terns gave vent to as they heard the news, told in Christie’s usual gentle, drawling tones; and by the time that the cheers had died away the two craft had drawn so far apart that further conversation was, for the moment, impossible.