“Aye, aye, sorr,” answered Tim; and going up to the rail he shouted out in his ringing voice, “All ha–a–nds aft!”
“Now, my men,” said “Old Jock,” leaning over the poop and addressing them as they stood below on the main-deck—“we’ve got a batch of rascally pirates coming up after us astern; and, as you know, we can’t run away from ’em. What will ye do—cave in to ’em or fight ’em?”
The crew broke into a rousing cheer.
“Ye’ll fight ’em, then?”
“Aye, aye, fight ’em till we make ’em sick!” shouted one of the hands speaking for the rest, who endorsed his answer on their behalf with a “Hip, hip, hooray!”
“And one for the skipper,” shouted Joe Fergusson, who was a sailor of sailors by this time and had learnt all their ways and talk, dropping out of his old provincialisms. “Hip, hip, hooray!”
“And another for Mr Mackay,” cried a voice that sounded like that of Adams, causing the hooraying to start again with fresh force, this cheer being much heartier than the first.
“Now, men,” said Captain Gillespie, “as ye’ve let off all your gas, let me see what ye can do in action. Bosun, serve out the cutlasses and distribute the rest of the guns.”
This being done and all of the men armed in one way or another, the deficiencies of the captain’s armoury being made good by the aid of handspikes which Mr Mackay had thoughtfully ordered to be brought aft while we were taking up the rifles and other things from the cabin. Even Billy, the ship’s boy, got hold of an old bayonet, which he brandished about near Pedro Carvalho the steward, who had come out of his pantry to see what all the noise was about, which gesture on his part almost frightening the Portuguese, who, as I’ve related before, was an innate coward, into a fit. At all events, it made him turn of a yellowish pallor that did not improve his complexion.
“Carramba!” he exclaimed, as he retreated back within his pantry. “Fora, maldito!”