“Niver fear, sorr,” answered the second luff; “they’ll not get away from— By all the powers though, there goes one of thim now!”
And away he dashed forward again, shouting out certain orders to the men, while the skipper, after hesitating for a few seconds, entered the companion and began to descend.
My attention had been somewhat distracted from my prisoner by this brief conversation, a fact which had evidently not passed unnoticed by him, for before I fully realised what was happening, he had in some inexplicable manner sprung to his feet with a single, lightning-like movement, and his hand was already upon my left wrist, when with a quick twist of the arm I managed to get my pistol-barrel pointed at him as I pressed the trigger. There was a bright flash, lighting up the whole cabin as though by a gleam of lightning, and glancing vividly from the rolling eyeballs of my antagonist, a sharp explosion, and the Spaniard went reeling backward with a crash upon one of the sofas as the captain entered the cabin at a bound.
“Hillo!” he exclaimed, as he peered at me in the faint light of the lantern, “who are you, and what is the matter here? Why—bless me!—it is Mr Dugdale, isn’t it? And pray who is that man on the sofa?”
In a few brief words I narrated my
adventure, to which he listened quietly, holding his wounded hand, bound up in a handkerchief, in the other meanwhile; and when I had finished, he glanced at the prostrate figure on the sofa and said, noticing the ghastly paleness of the upturned face, and the lifelessness of the outstretched limbs—
“Well, he looks as though there was not much mischief left in him now, at all events. But it will not do to take any risks; he is evidently a desperate character, or was before you pinked him, so slip up on deck and get a length of line—a bit off one of the topgallant-braces will do if you can’t find anything better—to make him fast with. And call a couple of hands to come below and carry him on deck; it is scarcely safe to leave such a fellow alone in the cabin, even when securely bound.”
I hobbled on deck as well as my burnt foot—which by this time was excruciatingly painful—would permit, and finding a suitable bit of line, and securing the assistance of two of our lads, the slave-captain, as he eventually proved to be, was speedily bound hand and foot, conveyed on deck, and propped up in a reclining position against the bulwarks, well aft out of the way, in such a position as seemed least likely to encourage the bleeding of his wound.
Meanwhile, Ryan, upon leaving the skipper, had rushed forward and hailed the fugitive schooner, in his richest Dublin accent, to heave-to, or he would sink her. To this command, however, whether understood or not, no attention was paid; and before our people, groping about in the thick darkness among the dead and wounded, could lay their hands upon a single cartridge, they had the mortification of seeing her vanish round a bend of the creek on her way seaward, the lieutenant consoling himself with the assurance that she would infallibly be snapped up by the Barracouta, whose slender crew would be certain to be on the alert all through the night. When the skipper and I arrived on deck, after securing our prisoner, Ryan and a few of our lads were busily employed ramming home a charge in the long eighteen mounted upon the brig’s forecastle, a cartridge and shot for which they had stumbled across in their search. The second luff at once began to relate, with many comical expressions of righteous indignation, the particulars of the schooner’s escape; but he had scarcely got well into his narrative when the faint screep of a block-sheave from to windward warned us that another of our slippery neighbours was about to hazard a like experiment. Without waiting for orders, or thinking of what I was doing, forgetting even my injured foot in the excitement of the moment, I sprang upon the rail and hailed in Spanish—