“You Captain Margaret now, Robin. Sabe? You Capitano. Capitano sobre tula guannah anivego. Mamaubah. Eh? Shennorung Capitano. Muchas mujercillas. Eh?”
Five hundred yards further on the rowers had to rest. They splashed themselves with water, took a drink of spirits, and lay back in the stern-sheets. They were worn out. Margaret was worn out, too. He had no strength left in him. He lay back, dully, watching the ship; noting, though with no intellectual comprehension, an array of men passing down the gangway, making a great noise. It was still, after the roar of the battle. The cries and oaths came down the wind to him, clearly, across the water. He saw three long canoas, full of men, pull clear from the ship’s side, with one man, not very big, standing in the sternsheets of the largest, shrilly cursing at the ship. “That’s my note,” were the only words which he could catch. “That’s my note.” He wondered whose note and what note it could be. But his head was reeling; he didn’t really care.
“There’s a woman in the canoa there,” said one of the rowers.
“My God,” he said, rousing up, as the beaten boxer rises, though spent, at his second’s cheer. “It’s not Mrs. Stukeley? It’s not Mrs. Stukeley?”
“No, sir,” said a rower. “The other lady.”
“Yes,” he said, looking intently. “The other. Mrs. Inigo. What’s happened?”
“Pain’s got your crew,” Tucket answered. “He’s leaving you to the Spaniards.”
Dully, as they passed about the rum-flask, they saw the boats draw up to Pain’s ship. They saw sail made upon her, the sprit-sail for casting, the topgallant-sails in the buntlines. Soon she was under way, lying over to the breeze, sailing a point or two free, bound past the Mestizos to the southward. Her men, gathered on her poop to hoist the mizen, cursed the Broken Heart from the taffrail, firing a volley of pistols at her in farewell. Two of the three sloops sailed at the same time. As they passed away, crowding all sail, foaming at the bows with their eight-knot rush, Margaret heard the chanties at the halliards, a broken music, coming in the gusts of the wind.
Tucket took one of the oars, and sat at the thwart wearily, searching for a helper among the sternsheets. Captain Margaret, the Indian, could not row. The other five were exhausted. “Boys,” he said, “if we don’t get a gait on us, we’ll be sunstruck. We’re losing way, too. The breeze is setting us ashore.”
Margaret rose up wearily, like a man in a dream, and sat down to row at the thwart. They pulled a ragged stroke together. They were too tired to do much. They pulled a few strokes, and paused, to look round. Then pulled again painfully and again paused. One of the men took up a pistol and fired into the air. “We’ll never make it,” he said. He fired again and again, till some one in the ship caught sight of them and fired in reply. A boat manned by half a dozen men put off to them, veering out line astern, so that those aboard might heave them in at the capstan. Cammock and Perrin were two of the rowers, the only two who could pull an oar; the negro steward steered. The rest of them rowed like marines on pay-day going through the platoon. The wounded and weary smiled to see them; they had never seen such rowing. Slowly they drew up. Margaret saw Perrin and Cammock glancing over their shoulders at him. They cheered and waved when they saw him. He waved his unhurt arm to them. The canoa swung round and backed alongside. Cammock, laying in his oar, shifted his towing-line to the bow, and bent to it the painter of Tucket’s canoa, so that the boats might tow together. “Let your oars swing fore and aft, boys,” he said. He lifted his voice, and yelled to the ship to heave in. “Well, sir,” he said, coming aft alongside Margaret. “And how are you? I’m glad to see you alive. The men said you were killed.”