“Och yes, I saw the noble baste,” interrupted Garry in his quick, enthusiastic way. “Begorrah, colonel, he fought betther than any two-legged Christian amongst us, an’ I can’t say more than that for him, sure, paice to his name!”
Before he could say anything further, and you know he was a rare one to talk when once he commenced, the skipper advanced again, holding out his hand to the colonel exclaiming— “Yes, thank God you are all right and that your little child is safe, and escaped any harm from those scoundrels, except her nerves probably being much shaken, but that she will soon recover at her age—and I told you she should be restored to you, you know. By George! Though, we’ve paid them out at last for demon’s work aboard here!”
“The devils!” ejaculated Colonel Vereker savagely, his mood changing as he recollected all he had seen and suffered at their hands. “Have you killed them all?”
“All but half a dozen of the rascals, whom we had a rare hunt after through the hold and fo’c’s’le before we could collar them. They are fast bound now, though, lashed head and feet to the mainmast bitts; and it will puzzle them to wriggle themselves loose from old Masters’ double hitches, I know. Besides which, two of our men are guarding there, with boarding-pikes in their hands and orders to run ’em through the gizzard if they offer to stir.”
“Faith,” observed Garry O’Neil reflectively, “It was as purty a bit of foighting as I ivver took a hand in, whilst it lasted!”
“But let us go and see what has become of all those chaps below—all those you mentioned as belonging to the French crew, whom you left on board with your daughter,” went on the skipper. “We saw the flash of a pistol, you remember, when we came up alongside, and somebody must have prevented those villains from getting into the cabin, or else—”
He stopped here and looked meaningly at Elsie.
“Heavens!” exclaimed the colonel, attempting to rise, but falling back on the hen-coop along the side of the bulwarks he had been using for a temporary seat, he seemed so utterly exhausted. “Ah, those brave fellows, I was almost forgetting them; but I can’t move, Señor Applegarth, or I should have gone down before this to see what had become of my old comrades; but I’m helpless, as you see.”
Elsie now lifted her head, looked up and turned towards the skipper.
“They are all wounded,” said she, clasping her hands together and with a look of fright on her face. “Two of the men—the French sailors, I mean—and the English gentleman.”