“Well,” said Harry, “it strikes me as rather a foolish thing to leave the ships’ guns scattered about the beach as they are at present. If we should be attacked we could never use them, pointing as they are in all directions; we could not fire without danger of hitting one another. It would be a good thing, I think, if the captain, instead of leaving the weapons strewed about the beach as at present, were to arrange them in a circle round the place where we are working on the two vessels, and get them loaded in readiness, and we should then be prepared to repel an attack if it came.”
“A very good idea, Harry,” exclaimed Roger; “you always seem to be prepared with good schemes. Go and tell the captain, and see what he says.”
Harry at once ran off and told Cavendish what Roger and he thought of the matter.
“You two lads,” said Cavendish, “seem ever to be thinking of attacks by natives. Yet your scheme, young man, is a good one, and I will have it carried out at once; it is well to be on the safe side.”
He accordingly gave the necessary orders, and the men turned to with a will, with the result that the guns were soon arranged as Harry had suggested, with the muzzles so pointing as to command not only the adjacent bush but also the whole range of the beach. The weapons were then loaded, and the party were reasonably secure from an attack in that direction.
By this time the tide was ebbing fast, and the men took a pull on the ropes secured to the ships’ masts, with the result that the vessels soon began to heel over perceptibly on their sides. As the tide continued to drop, the ropes were hauled upon, and soon the vessels were down on their beam-ends. Then the men, like a swarm of ants, grew busy on their exposed sides, working with hammer and chisel, paint-pot and brush, and the scene became one of great activity.
The tide had by this time retreated so far that the hulls of the vessels were clear of the water, and the men could work right down to their keels, the ships being hard and fast aground, so that they could not possibly be moved until the next tide.
As they could not leave the captured Spaniards in the careened ships, and dared not let them loose to help with the work, they had been transferred to the two craft still afloat, the Elizabeth and the Good Adventure.
Roger and Harry were slung over the bow of the Tiger, both of them busy with scrapers taking off the old paint before the new was put on. It thus happened that they were higher above the level of the beach than any of the others, the part of the hull upon which they were working being just below the starboard cat-head.
Roger was scraping away merrily, when Harry plucked his sleeve.