Chapter Twenty.
“Jocko.”
“I believe I do, Mick,” I said, squinting down as eagerly as himself into the boat, near to which the ship was gradually sidling up, her way having been checked by her being brought up to the wind and the maintop-sail backed. “They are very quiet, poor chaps. I wonder if they are all dead?”
The same thought seemed to have occurred to the old commodore; for, as I said this, in pursuance of some order he must have given to that effect—for nobody does a thing on board a man-o’-war without the previous command of his superior officer—the boatswain hailed the little craft.
“Boat ahoy!” he shouted, with his lungs of brass and voice of a bull. “Ahoy! Ahoy-oy!”
No answer came, nor was there any movement amongst the boat’s occupants, who were lying pell-mell along the thwarts and on the bottom boards in her sternsheets.
“Poor fellows, they must be all dead!” exclaimed the commodore, almost in my own words. “Mr Osborne, get a boat ready to send off and overhaul her!”
The officer of the watch, however, had already made preparations to this end, the first cutter’s crew having been piped and the men standing ready by the davits to lower her into the water, with the gripes cast off and the falls cleared.
“All ready there, coxsun, eh?” he cried; and then, without waiting for any answer, he sang out, “Lower away!”
Down glided the cutter into the water as the hands inboard eased off the falls; and, her crew having dropped their oars, the next minute she was pulling out towards the boat, which was now only some twenty yards or so off the ship, abreast of our mizzen-chains.