“I feel the truth of all your reasons, and think with you.”
A shade of gloomy distrust, which had gathered over the brow of the Rover during the foregoing scene, lighted a little as he listened to the direct and frank avowal of his lieutenant.
“You believe she bears a pennant? I like this manliness of reply. Then comes another question. Shall we fight her?”
To this interrogatory it was not so easy to give a decisive answer. Each officer consulted the opinions of his comrades, in their eyes, until their leader saw fit to make his application still more personal.
“Now, General, this is a question peculiarly fitted for your wisdom,” he resumed: “Shall we give battle to a pennant? or shall we spread our wings, and fly?”
“My bullies are not drilled to the retreat. Give them any other work to do, and I will answer for their steadiness.”
“But shall we venture, without a reason?”
“The Spaniard often sends his bullion home under cover of a cruiser’s guns,” observed one of the inferiors, who rarely found pleasure in any risk that did not infer its correspondent benefit. “We may feel the stranger; if he carries more than his guns, he will betray it by his reluctance to speak, but if poor, we shall find him fierce as a half-fed tiger.”
“There is sense in your counsel, Brace, and it shall be regarded. Go then, gentlemen, to your several duties. We’ll pass the half hour that may be needed, before his hull shall rise, in looking to our gear, and overhauling the guns. As it is not decided to fight, let what is done be done without display. My people must see no receding from a resolution taken.”
The groupe then separated, each man preparing to undertake the task that more especially belonged to the situation that he filled in the ship. Wilder was about to retire with the rest, but a significant sign drew him to the side of his chief, who continued on the poop alone with his new confederate.