"Gentlemen, take any privilege you please. You have stood by me like heroes; and I owe you all more than the heel of a worthless old life will ever permit me to pay."
The two young men did not wait for a second invitation but in five minutes the boat was stretching through one of the channels that led landward; and in five more it was laying out of the inlet with a steady breeze.
The instant Captain Truck retrod the deck of his ship was one of uncontrollable feeling with the weather-beaten old seaman. The ship had sewed too much to admit of walking with ease, and he sat down on the coaming of the main hatch, and fairly wept like an infant. So high had his feelings been wrought that this out-breaking was violent, and the men wondered to see their grey-headed, stern, old commander, so completely unmanned. He seemed at length ashamed of the weakness himself, for, rising like a worried tiger, he began to issue his orders as sternly and promptly as was his wont.
"What the devil are you gaping at, men!" he growled; "did you never see a ship on her bilge before? God knows, and for that matter you all know, there is enough to do, that you stand like so many marines, with their 'eyes right!' and 'pipe-clay.'"
"Take it more kindly, Captain Truck," returned an old sea-dog, thrusting out a hand that was all knobs, a fellow whose tobacco had not been displaced even by the fray; "take it kindly, and look upon all these boxes and bales as so much cargo that is to be struck in, in dock. We'll soon stow it, and, barring a few slugs, and one four-pounder, that has cut up a crate of crockery as if it had been a cat in a cupboard, no great harm is done. I look upon this matter as no more than a sudden squall, that has compelled us to bear up for a little while, but which will answer for a winch to spin yarns on all the rest of our days. I have fit the French, and the English, and the Turks, in my time; and now I can say I have had a brush with the niggers."
"D--n me, but you are right, old Tom! and I'll make no more account of the matter. Mr. Leach, give the people a little encouragement. There is enough left in the jug that you'll find in the stern-sheets of the pinnace; and then turn-to, and strike in all this dunnage, that the Arabs have been scattering on the sands. We'll stow it when we get the ship into an easier bed than the one in which she is now lying."
This was the signal for commencing work; and these straight-forward tars, who had just been in the confusion and hazards of a fight, first took their grog, and then commenced their labour in earnest. As they had only, with their knowedge and readiness, to repair the damage done by the ignorant and hurried Arabs, in a short time every thing was on board the ship again, when their attention was directed to the situation of the vessel itself. Not to anticipate events, however, we will now return to the party in the launch.
The reader will readily imagine the feelings with which Mr. Effingham and his party listened to the report of the first gun. As they all remained below, they were ignorant who the individual really was that kept pacing the roof over their heads, though it was believed to be the second mate, agreeably to the arrangement made by Captain Truck.
"My eyes grow dim," said Mr. Effingham, who was looking through a glass; "will you try to see what is passing, Eve?"
"Father, I cannot look," returned the pallid girl. "It is misery enough to hear these frightful guns."