“Sure an’ it’s a good riddance they are!” exclaimed Mr McCarthy, rising to his feet and shaking out his legs to see how far they were capable of movement after the mauling he had received. “May joy go wid them!”
“I hope the hull durned crowd will git swallowed up in Davy Jones’ Locker afore they git ashore, I dew!” said the American fervently, stroking his nose tenderly and speaking more nasally than ever through the injury the organ had received. “Of all the tarnation mean skunks I ever kim across from Maine to California, I guess they’re ’bout the right down slick meanest—not nary a heathen Chinese would ha’ done what they hev! I’d tar and feather them, I would sure, if I hed the chance, right away!”
“Never mind them,” interposed Mr Meldrum, whose first care after the mutineers had released him and gone over the side, was to raise up poor Captain Dinks’ head again and feel his pulse. “I have no doubt they will meet with their proper deserts! Let us see to the captain now. I think he had better be moved into the cabin, for this night air is doing him no good; and, besides, we’ll there be able to see to his wound better. However I shall want some assistance.”
“I’ll hilp you in a minit, sorr,” ejaculated Mr McCarthy, who, as soon as he had satisfied himself that his limbs were pretty sound, had devoted his energies to opening the hatchway—“that is as soon as I’ve unkivered this limbo and let the other hands come up. Faix, an’ if them divils had not battened it down and Boltrope and the Norwegee could a got at thim, it’s too many for tbim we’d ha’ been, I’m thinking!”
“I didn’t see what they were after,” said Frank, “or I would have slipped the cover before they secured it; but I wonder where Mr Adams is all this time? Surely he must have heard the row! He ought to have come to our aid.”
“By the powers,” exclaimed the first mate, “I niver thought of him till this blessid minnit! Where, in the name of Moses, can he be? I believe he wint down and turned into his cot when I did.”
“He ain’t jined them copperheads and left us in the lurch, hey?” inquired the American. “I didn’t kinder think it on him, though he wer sorter quiet and sly-like.”
“No, sorr,” replied Mr McCarthy, “Adams is a first-rate seaman and a good officer too! He would be the last man to join a mutiny. Something must have happened to him, I’m thinking.”
“I wonder, too,” said Mr Meldrum, “that my daughter Kate has not come up before from the saloon! She must have known that something unusual was taking place on deck from our calls for help and the report of your pistol, Mr Lathrope?”
“I’m durned if I know! I’m all in a tangle, I guess,” answered the American; “but I’ll go down and see, mister.”