“Kick down that plank, Robert, my lad, and see that it falls clear of everything,” said Lance. “Are we all clear fore and aft?”
“All clear, sir,” came the hearty reply from various parts of the deck.
“Are you ready with the axe forward there, Kit?”
“All ready, sir.”
“Then cut.”
A dull cheeping thud of the axe was immediately heard, accompanied by a sharp twang as the tautly strained line parted; then followed the sound of the shores falling to the ground; there was a gentle jar, and the schooner began to move.
“She moves!—she moves!” was the cry. “Hurrah! Now she gathers way.”
“Yes,” shouted Lance, joyously. “She’s going. Success to the Petrel”—as he shivered to pieces on the stem-head a bottle of wine which the steward, anxious that the launch should be shorn of none of its honours, had brought up from the cabin and hastily thrust into his hand. “Three cheers for the saucy Petrel, my lads—hip, hip, hip, hurrah!”
The three cheers rang lustily out upon the still air of the breathless night as the schooner shot with rapidly increasing velocity down the ways and finally plunged into the mirrorlike waters of the bay, dipping her stern deeply and ploughing up a smooth glassy furrow of water fringed at its outer edge with a coruscating border of vivid phosphorescent light.
“The boats—the boats again!” suddenly shouted Bowles, as the schooner, now fairly afloat, shot rapidly stern-foremost away from the rock—“Good God! they are right in our track; we shall cut them in two.”