“Come, Rogers I come, Martin! what the mischief have you been about, keeping us dodging in the offing all this while?” demanded Williams fiercely. “Hook on the tackles, and let us be off,” he continued.
“Wait a minute, cap’n,” answered Rogers; “we’ve a bit of news for you that I expect you won’t particularly relish. One of the men has cut and run; and it was hunting for him that kept us ashore so long.”
“Who is if!” demanded Williams.
“Why, it’s Tom Nicholls, one of the steerage passengers that Blyth shipped after we fell in with that barque on her beam-ends.”
“So he has bolted, has he, the white-livered hound!” ejaculated Williams furiously. “Well, he shall not escape us. Take your boats’ crews, both of you; give each man a rifle and half a dozen rounds of ball cartridge, and pull ashore again and hunt the cur until you find him, and bring him aboard here to me, dead or alive! I’ll anchor the ship and wait for you, if it takes you a week to do the job.”
“Ay, ay, we’ll get him before the day is over, never fear!” exclaimed Rogers, apparently in high glee at receiving the brutal order. “Come along, mates, and get your rifles; it isn’t every day that we get the chance of such a spree as a man-hunt!”
The boats’ crews had, during this short colloquy, scrambled up the ship’s side to the deck, and had gathered round the speakers, curious to see how Williams would receive the news of the loss; and it was to these that Rogers had addressed himself.
They did not, however, appear to by any means enter into the spirit of the thing, hanging back so coldly unresponsive to the mate’s jovial invitation that the latter paused in blank astonishment.
“Why—why—what the—” began Rogers, when he was brusquely interrupted by one of the men, who stepped forward and said:
“Get somebody else to go in my place, matey. I don’t understand man-huntin’, as you calls it, and should only make a poor fist at it, I’m afraid.”