Two of the Greeks placing themselves on either side of the cabin hatch to give a warm reception to the captain and the rest of the Englishmen whom the noise had fully wakened up, for they were heard stirring below, the remainder distributed themselves in the rigging, and started an exciting hunt after the three who had sought safety aloft.
The steersman was the first caught, and the sweep of a knife blade across the rope end by which he had lowered himself from the extreme tip of the mizzen yard-arm, sent him dropping into the sea with a faint despairing scream; but, the first mate and lookout man led them a fine dance, up the shrouds on one side and down on the other, and shifting from the mizzen to the mainmast, and from that to the foretop again by sliding down the stays, or catching hold of the falls and halliards when the pursuit grew too hot—until both parties, the hunters and the hunted alike, paused for a moment to draw breath.
As they did so, the two Englishmen who were now together in the mizzen-top, and the Greeks who were ascending the shrouds on either hand—the former looking down on the quarter-deck below them, and the latter gazing towards the land that had just been sighted—uttered as if in chorus an exclamation of joy, the echo of which from the others seemed to bewilder both the Greeks and Englishmen.
It was a curious coincidence, the opposite causes for the gratulation on either side coming together as it were, but so it was.
At the very moment the mutineers had stopped in their murderous chase of the first mate and the remaining British sailor, Captain Harding, holding a revolver in each hand, came up through the cabin skylight, as if propelled by some hidden machinery below—Tom, Charley, and the steward, all armed to the teeth, jumping up after him.
“Death to the traitorous scoundrels!” exclaimed Captain Harding, levelling the revolver in his right hand at one of the Greeks who remained by the companion, paralysed by the unexpected appearance of those below from a quarter he had never imagined, while he was looking out for them in a different direction.
A flash. Bang! and the man fell dead in his tracks; while Tom gave the other Greek sentry a wipe over the head with a cutlass, which also sent him to the deck.
Just then, however, the felucca, which had been lost sight of so suddenly, and which no one had seen approaching the ship but the desperadoes aloft, and even they only at the end of the struggle—seemed to start up out of the deep in some mysterious fashion close to the Muscadine, and sheered alongside, with a triumphant cheer from the brutal-visaged ruffians who lined her deck that made Tom and Charley’s blood run cold!