The touch of bombast was not out of place. It jumped so far with the humour of the convicts that they set up a feeble cheer, at which Sylvia frowned. Frightened as she was, the prison-bred child was as much astonished at hearing convicts cheer as a fashionable lady would be to hear her footman quote poetry. Bates, however—practical and calm—took quite another view of the case. The bold project, so boldly avowed, seemed to him a sheer absurdity. The “Dandy” and a crew of nine convicts navigate a brig round the world! Preposterous; why, not a man aboard could work a reckoning! His nautical fancy pictured the Osprey helplessly rolling on the swell of the Southern Ocean, or hopelessly locked in the ice of the Antarctic Seas, and he dimly guessed at the fate of the deluded ten. Even if they got safe to port, the chances of final escape were all against them, for what account could they give of themselves? Overpowered by these reflections, the honest fellow made one last effort to charm his captors back to their pristine bondage.
“Fools!” he cried, “do you know what you are about to do? You will never escape. Give up the brig, and I will declare, before my God, upon the Bible, that I will say nothing, but give all good characters.”
Lesly and another burst into a laugh at this wild proposition, but Rex, who had weighed his chances well beforehand, felt the force of the pilot's speech, and answered seriously.
“It's no use talking,” he said, shaking his still handsome head. “We have got the brig, and we mean to keep her. I can navigate her, though I am no seaman, so you needn't talk further about it, Mr. Bates. It's liberty we require.”
“What are you going to do with us?” asked Bates.
“Leave you behind.”
Bates's face blanched. “What, here?”
“Yes. It don't look a picturesque spot, does it? And yet I've lived here for some years”; and he grinned.
Bates was silent. The logic of that grin was unanswerable.
“Come!” cried the Dandy, shaking off his momentary melancholy, “look alive there! Lower away the jolly-boat. Mrs. Vickers, go down to your cabin and get anything you want. I am compelled to put you ashore, but I have no wish to leave you without clothes.” Bates listened, in a sort of dismal admiration, at this courtly convict. He could not have spoken like that had life depended on it. “Now, my little lady,” continued Rex, “run down with your mamma, and don't be frightened.”