“You will, eh?” retorted Brown, slipping his right hand casually into his jacket pocket. “Then—hands up, you skunk! hands up; and look spry about it, or by the living Jingo I’ll shoot! Up with ’em, I say. Ah! that’s better, a good deal!” as Slocum slowly and reluctantly raised his hands above his head in response to our skipper’s command, emphasised by a levelled revolver which the “Old Man” had produced so rapidly that it was quite like a conjuring trick.
“Now, Mr Temple,” continued Brown, addressing me but keeping his eye unwaveringly upon his prisoner, “just you go to the rail and persuade them two in the dory to come up on deck; persuade ’em with yer gun if you can’t do it any other way. I guess we’ll have to go on usin’ force, now that this cantankerous cuss have obliged us to begin. And you, Mr Cunnin’ham, be good enough to pass the word for the carpenter to lay aft wi’ three sets of irons.”
“Here, I say, you monkey-faced old pirate, whatcher givin’ us? Whatcher mean by callin’ for irons? You don’t mean ter say you’re goin’ to make a prisoner of me, do yer?” demanded Slocum, dropping his hands in his fury.
“Hands up!” snapped the skipper, quick as lightning. Then, as Slocum threw them up again, he replied:
“Not goin’ to make a prisoner of ye, eh? You bet I sure am, then, you and the hull of your crowd, since you’ve come here spoilin’ for trouble. But I don’t want no trouble myself, I ain’t that sorter man; so I’m goin’ to keep you ’uns safe in irons until I’ve finished my business here, a’ter which I’ll release ye, and you can do what yer like.”
“The fust thing I’ll do when you release me is to blow the blamed head off your shoulders, ye all-fired pirate,” snapped Slocum viciously.
“Put this man in irons,” ordered Brown, as the carpenter came along, and the next minute Slocum was fettered and Chips was overhauling him to make sure that he had no concealed weapons about him. Meanwhile I had succeeded in “persuading” the two men who constituted the crew of the dory to leave their boat and come up on deck, and they, too, were promptly clapped in irons. Thus we already had in our power three of the Kingfisher’s complement of ten men all told, leaving seven, as opposed to our own fourteen.
“Take ’em away and confine ’em below in the fore peak,” ordered Brown. And when this was done, “I guess there’s no sense in makin’ two bites at a cherry,” observed the skipper. “We can’t spare the time to fool around watchin’ those fellers; so have the longboat hauled alongside, and let all hands except the cook and the cabin boy take their guns and cutlasses and get down into her. We’ll just meander across and take that there Kingfisher right away, so savin’ a heap o’ trouble in the long run. And while we’re doing that, ‘the Doctor’ and the boy’ll stay here and keep an eye on the chaps down below.”
So said, so done; we secured possession of the Kingfisher without any difficulty, for although her crew guessed our errand the moment that they saw us coming, they could not very well help themselves, such weapons as the Nantucket craft was provided with being stowed away and locked up in Slocum’s own cabin, where the crew could not get at them except by breaking down the door. But apart from that, they had no stomach for fighting in the absence of Slocum, and they surrendered immediately upon being ordered to do so, although, it must be confessed, with not too good a grace. Having thus secured possession of the Kingfisher, the next thing that we did was to give her another fifty fathoms of cable, so that she would ride easily and without being watched in any weather that we were likely to have; after which her crew, having previously been searched and deprived of everything that could by any chance be utilised as a weapon, were ordered down into the longboat, taken aboard the Martha, clapped in irons, and put down below into the fore peak along with Slocum and the two men out of the dory, one of our own men being detailed each day afterwards to mount guard over them while the rest of us resumed operations ashore.
It cost us three weeks of strenuous work to complete the examination of, and extract the pearls from the oysters that it had taken us a fortnight to fish up from the bottom of the sea, and when we had finished even the skipper confessed himself satisfied, so great had been our success. Yet, although Brown was so far satisfied that he was content to leave the remainder of the oysters to Slocum, he could not bring himself to leave behind the empty shells from which we had extracted the pearls; pearl shell, he informed us, was worth so many dollars—I forget how many—per ton in New York, and it would pay him well to take in all that we had—discarding an equal weight of ballast—and carry it there. The task of cleaning, carrying on board, and storing this shell—including the turning out of cargo and the discharge of ballast to make room for it—occupied us another fortnight; consequently by the time that all was done and we were ready to sail again we had been close upon two months at the island. Then, upon a certain lovely morning, we loosed and set our canvas and hove short; after which the crew of the Kingfisher, Slocum included, were brought up on deck, ordered over the side into the longboat, and transferred to their own vessel, one man being released from his irons as soon as the transfer had been effected, in order that he in turn might release the others. And while this was being done the longboat returned to the Martha Brown and was hoisted in; after which we tripped our anchor, hove it up to the bows, and stood out to sea.