The drum of the Englishman was now, for the first time, heard rattling across the waters, and echoing the call to quarters, that had already proceeded from the Ariel.
“Ay! you have sent him to his guns!” said Barnstable; “we shall now hear more of it; wake him up, Tom—wake him up.”
“We shall start him on end, or put him to sleep altogether, shortly,” said the deliberate cockswain, who never allowed himself to be at all hurried, even by his commander. My shot are pretty much like a shoal of porpoises, and commonly sail in each other's wake. Stand by—heave her breech forward—so; get out of that, you damned young reprobate, and let my harpoon alone!”
“What are you at, there, Master Coffin?” cried Barnstable; “are you tongue-tied?”
“Here's one of the boys skylarking with my harpoon in the lee-scuppers, and by and by, when I shall want it most, there'll be a no-man's land to hunt for it in.”
“Never mind the boy, Tom; send him aft here to me, and I'll polish his behavior; give the Englishman some more iron.”
“I want the little villain to pass up my cartridges,” returned the angry old seaman; “but if you'll be so good, sir, as to hit him a crack or two, now and then, as he goes by you to the magazine, the monkey will learn his manners, and the schooner's work will be all the better done for it. A young herring-faced monkey! to meddle with a tool ye don't know the use of. If your parents had spent more of their money on your edication, and less on your outfit, you'd ha' been a gentleman to what ye are now.”
“Hurrah! Tom, hurrah!” cried Barnstable, a little impatiently; “is your namesake never to open his throat again!”
“Ay, ay, sir; all ready,” grumbled the cockswain; “depress a little; so—so; a damned young baboon-behaved curmudgeon; overhaul that forward fall more; stand by with your match—but I'll pay him!—fire!” This was the actual commencement of the fight; for as the shot of Tom Coffin traveled, as he had intimated, very much in the same direction, their enemy found the sport becoming too hot to be endured in silence, and the report of the second gun from the Ariel was instantly followed by that of the whole broadside of the Alacrity. The shot of the cutter flew in a very good direction, but her guns were too light to give them efficiency at that distance; and as one or two were heard to strike against the bends of the schooner, and fall back, innocuously, into the water, the cockswain, whose good-humor became gradually restored as the combat thickened, remarked with his customary apathy:
“Them count for no more than love-taps—does the Englishman think that we are firing salutes!”