“Now, me bhoys, altogether,” cried Garry O’Neil, looking over the top of the booby-hatch over the companion-way, “three cheers for the cap’en, horray!”
“Horray!” roared the lot below with a kindred enthusiasm, “Horray! Horray!”
“We’re almost within hail now of the chase, sir,” sang out Mr Fosset from the bridge when the echo of the last deafening cheer had died away; “I’m going to slow down, so that we can sheer up alongside.”
“That’s just what I was waiting for,” said the skipper in answer to this. “Now, men, you see that ship ahead of us?”
“Aye,” called out the foremost hand, who had before spoken—the usual leader, and the wit of the fo’c’s’le—“the ghost-ship, cap’en.”
“Well, ghost-ship, devil-ship, or whatever she may be, my lads, we’re going to board her and rescue a young lady, a child in age, the daughter of my friend, Colonel Vereker here, and a lot of white men like yourselves, who are now at the mercy of a gang of black demons who have murdered the rest of the passengers and crew and taken possession of the vessel. Are you going to stand by me, lads?”
His answer was another deafening cheer, heartier and louder even than the first.
“Ah, I thought I could reckon on your help,” cried the skipper in a tone of proud satisfaction, glancing round at the colonel. “I have got your tools handy for you, too, my lads; and if you will come up to the poop in single file by the port-ladder, going down again by the starboard gangway, each shall be supplied in turn. Mr O’Neil, please serve out the cutlasses and boarding-pikes. Now, my men, way aloft there! Single file, and no crushing, mind, and we’ll get the job done all the quicker!”
Ere he had finished speaking the arming of the men had already begun, and within a very few minutes the cutlasses and long boarding-pikes had all been distributed, every man having some weapon.
“Now, bo’sun, pipe the men to their stations,” sang out the skipper, who appeared to have already matured his plan of action. “Starboard watch forrad, port watch aft, and all the stokers and firemen amidships, under the bridge. Have a couple of hands, too, in the forechains, with a hawser and grapnel, ready to make fast to the ship when we come alongside her.”