'Another boat!' murmured the second thief, and scrambled swiftly along the deck, and thrust his head over the side.
The two men were thunderstruck. A second boat! That meant someone abroad of whose presence they had not dreamed.
'Was it there when we came?' asked the second man.
'Not it,' replied the discoverer; 'the painter's made fast round ours.'
'Then, whoever came in that boat is aboard now,' went on his companion, 'an' we've been spied on an' followed.'
'It's a little boat. There can only be one,' said the other.
'Stand by the boat,' said the man aboard. 'I'll settle the spy.' And he clinched his words with a dreadful oath.
'Don't go too far,' said the man in the boat, who was a more timorous fellow.
'Too far!' growled the other. 'It's sink or swim with us now. There's somebody on this old barky as is fly to our little game, an' his mouth has got to be stopped. Wait; stave his boat in, and you keep in ours. Stave it in now while I'm here. He won't run away.' And again the desperate thief broke into a volley of savage imprecations.
Chippy had heard all this, and recognised how true was the last assertion of the infuriated rogue. There was no running away from the barquentine. No prison surer while his boat was in their hands. And at the next moment there was a crash of boat-hook on wooden plank. Three blows were struck. The little boat was not new, and its timbers gave easily. Three planks were staved in; it filled and sank.