Felix.—"Oh! any body may have the other egg, but I must keep one for my Tommy. He has never been quite well since he was with those brutes. And I am his doctor he says, so I order him eggs. And if I bid him do it, I know he would eat twenty, one after another."
Mother.—"How odd it seems to Schillie, our laughing at all this nonsense of the children, when we certainly are in a very uncomfortable position. We seem to think we are in no danger, now we have got the captain and Smart to help us, and I doubt if we were ever in a worse predicament than now."
Schillie.—"Predicament or not, it's extremely nasty not being allowed any water to wash with, and I shall owe Hargrave a grudge all my life. Here we have been accustomed to bathe two or three times a-day, now stewed to death we are only allowed sufficient water to send bread down our throats, that would otherwise stick there."
Mother.—"I wish that may be our greatest inconvenience; it's all very well for Smart to say that we are in no danger, but if these people keep staring at us and watching us all day as they did yesterday what are we to do? They'll stare us out, let alone the chance of our being broiled to death. I feel quite sure Madame will have a brain fever if we don't take care."
Schillie.—"Well don't fuss. We can last out a week of this work, perhaps, and then we shall at all events be less fat for the fishes. I intend to try the depths of those caverns before I put myself in the power of that pirate captain."
I shuddered as she pointed down to the blue waters, through whose depths we could see endless caverns of fantastically shaped coral.
"Oh! Ma'am, Ma'am," cried Jenny, "they are coming up." We ran for our weapons, concealing them as well as we could, and then stood on the defensive, Schillie on one side of the path and I on the other, the rest all ready to hand us the guns. "Shoot, Schillie, shoot," I said, "hit the foremost man, and he'll tumble over the others."
"I am trying, I am indeed, but don't you know I cannot even kill a wasp! Hang me if I can do it," said Schillie, turning white as a sheet, and letting her gun drop. Steadily Otty raises his gun, fires, and the foremost man falls, knocking over two others, and causing great confusion. Felix, by way of calming it, fires his gun right into the middle of them.
Their imprecations were loud and deep, and their rage seemed boundless as they looked up at their two little antagonists. One man dead, two hurt. "Very good boys," say we. But the pirates were not to be driven back in this manner. It was too humiliating to be repulsed by two boys. They seemed speculating as to what had become of Smart, he was evidently not with us. So once more they essayed the ascent, sheltering themselves as well as they could from the guns, by creeping under cover of the ledges of rock. "Now let's all be firm this time," we whispered, "for shoot them we must." Schillie took a great gulp of water, seized her gun, and once more we all stood ready. "Let them come quite close," said Oscar.
But a fresh person appeared on the scene of action, whose shrill screams told her name better than anything. Not that anybody seemed hurting or molesting her, but attracted, I suppose, by the sound of the guns, she had ventured forth from her hiding place, and discovered us all roosting at the top of the rock. Not being able to entertain more than one idea at a time, and that idea being since her separation from us solely how she could rejoin, it was not a matter of wonder, that to see us, was to make her rush down towards us. It never entered her limited capacity to think that the pirates might object to the re-union. However they showed themselves most civil and polite towards Mrs. Hargrave, though we on the rock did not give them credit for acting entirely from disinterested motives.