It was now broad daylight, and the Muscadine was working up to windward of the cluster of small islands that lie to the northward of Scarpanto, having just weathered the channel that separates it from Rhodes, when the topmasts of a ship could be seen rounding the headland nearest them.
“It’s one of our cruisers, boys,” whispered Captain Harding, whose keen eyes had distinguished a pendant flying from the main-truck of the new-comer.—“We are saved! we’re saved!”
The pirate captain, however, had ears as quick as the captain’s eyes were keen.
“Gag that babbler,” he cried to his men—in Greek of course—“and the two boys as well, and bundle them down into the cabin. Stay! take those men also, and serve them the same,” pointing to the steward and Jack Bower and the other three seamen.
All the Englishmen were hurried below without any unnecessary delay, with the exception of Mr Tompkins, whom the corsair next addressed, presenting the captain’s cocked revolver as he did so, and pressing the cold steel muzzle of the pistol against his right temple.
“You coward!” said he with a thrilling hiss on his tongue like a serpent’s; “your life trembles in the balance. If that vessel now approaching hails us, and you do not answer correctly, as I have already warned you, this bullet goes through your brain. Do you hear?”
“I hear. I—I—I—hear,” faltered out the first mate, while the perspiration stood out in great beads of fright on his forehead.
The vessel in front came nearer and nearer; and presently she rounded-to under the Muscadine’s stern, the old well-known Union Jack of Old England floating up to the masthead the while, and a hearty voice hailing the merchantman through a speaking-trumpet from her quarter-deck, not half a cable’s length away, in true nautical fashion—
“Ship ahoy! What ship is that?”
The corsair was standing by the side of Mr Tompkins, close by the taffrail. Before Captain Harding had been taken below he had removed his uniform cap and monkey-jacket, and put them on himself, so that he might pass for one of the ship’s officers, and he had likewise directed the majority of his men to lie down on the deck, lest their numbers might create suspicion.