Tom joined him in his cries for help. At first it seemed that the crew of the sailing vessel had not noticed them, for the big craft was keeping right on. But just when it looked as if she was going to slip by, leaving them there on their perilous perches, there was a sudden stir noticeable on her decks. A light flashed near her stern, and sharp voices were heard calling commands.
Presently she was hove to, her sails shivering and slapping, and her blocks rattling with an infernal din. A voice hailed them, seemingly through a megaphone:
“Ahoy thar, what’s the trouble?”
“We’re capsized. Throw us a line!” shouted Mr. Chillingworth.
To his astonishment, instead of his appeal being complied with, an argument seemed to ensue on the deck of the vessel. Some man appeared, so far as they could judge, to be urging their rescue, while others contended against it. “Let ’em rot there,” they heard, as one of the voices rose louder than the others, and the wind bore it down to them. “We ain’t in any business where we wants strangers aboard.”
But the objectors, it seemed, had the worst of the argument, for the next minute the sailing vessel began to drift down on them.
“Get ready to catch a line,” came a shout, and presently a rope came hissing through the air. Mr. Chillingworth hauled on it, drawing the sloop in under the lee of the high side of the sailing vessel. The castaways could now see that she was a schooner and a good-sized one, too.
“Hurry up, and git aboard thar,” bellowed a rough voice, from above, as they made fast. “We don’t want ter lose any more uv this slant uv wind than we has to, by Chowder!”
Something in the voice rang in a strangely familiar way in Tom’s ears. Why this was so, he was to know in a few minutes.
A Jacob’s ladder was cast to them and they clambered up it over the schooner’s rail, and presently were standing on the stern in the lee of a low deck-house. As they reached the deck, a figure stepped forward from the group which had aided in their rescue, and thrust a lantern into their faces.