Then Dick jumped aboard the catamaran. “I suppose you both have your revolvers?” he said to Nicholls and Simpson. “Are they fully loaded?” The two men replied in the affirmative. “Then up with your canvas,” he commanded; “and we will be off to the barque and settle this business forthwith. I will explain my plans to you as we go.”
With the cutter no longer sailing alongside her, the catamaran once more took rank as a fast-sailing and weatherly craft, and soon worked out to the spot where the Minerva rode at anchor. Dick, of course, by this time knew the curious craft well, and handled her with such consummate judgment that when at length he luffed her into the wind’s eye and ordered her sails to be lowered, she just handsomely slid up alongside the barque and came to a standstill abreast her starboard gangway.
“Look out there and catch a turn with this ’ere painter,” exclaimed Simpson, tossing a rope’s-end to a couple of men who peered down from the Minerva’s bulwarks upon the catamaran and her crew with mingled astonishment and dismay; and at the same moment Leslie and Nicholls made a spring for the barque’s side-ladder, and, shinning up it, tumbled in on deck to the further discomfiture of the two men aforesaid, leaving Simpson to follow, which he promptly did. The whole thing was done so smartly that the only two visible members of the barque’s crew—who seemed to be quite slow-moving and slow-thinking men—were completely taken by surprise, and evidently knew not what to make of it.
Meanwhile Leslie, with a single glance about the ship’s deserted decks, seemed to grasp the situation intuitively.
“Are you two men named Royston and Hampton?” he demanded.
“Ay, ay, sir; that’s us, sure enough,” answered one of the two, with a visible appearance of relief for some reason best known to himself.
“Unbuckle your belts and throw them down on deck,” commanded Dick, quietly drawing a brace of revolvers somewhat ostentatiously from his side-pockets.
“What for?” demanded one of the fellows. “Who be you, mister, to come aboard here and order—”
“Come, no nonsense,” interrupted Leslie, sternly. “You will do exactly what I order you to do, at once, and without hesitation, or it will be the worse for you. You understand?” And he levelled a pistol at the head of each man.
Thus gently persuaded, the two men grumblingly did as they were told. And when the discarded belts were flung savagely to the deck, it was seen that attached to each was a formidable sheath-knife.