“When you’re quite ready to launch, let me know, if you please, Mr Evelin, and I’ll go and light the fuse that’s to blow up the battery,” said Bob.
“Ah! to be sure,” answered Lance, “I had forgotten that. You may go up now if you like, Bob, and I’ll give you a call when we’re ready.”
Bob thereupon set off on his mission of destruction, while Lance and Poole with a couple of mauls began to knock out the wedges which Evelin, foreseeing from the very inception of the work some such emergency as the present, had introduced in the construction of the keel-blocks.
In a few minutes both parties met near the middle of the vessel, and the last pair of wedges were knocked out.
“That’s a good job well over,” exclaimed Poole; “and precious glad I am now that I thought of soaping them ways this morning. I knowed this here business must come afore long, and I detarmined to get as far ahead with the work as possible. Now I s’pose, sir, we’re all ready?”
“Yes, I think so,” answered Lance, “but I’ll just go forward and take a look along the keel to see that she is clear everywhere.”
He accordingly did so, and had the gratification of seeing by the still brilliant light of the fires that the keel was a good six inches clear of the blocks, fore and aft.
“All clear!” he shouted. “Now, go on board, everybody. Light the fuse, Robert, and come on board as soon as possible.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Bob from the not very distant battery.
A tiny spark of light appeared for an instant in the darkness high up on the face of the rock as our hero struck a match, and in another couple of minutes he was running nimbly up the steep plank leading from the rocks beneath to the schooner’s deck.