"We must act now," he said, "before they miss their man. They've stopped the engines, and we shall drop behind the others. There's only one chance, and that is to surprise them. Let's rush it and take the odds."
"You can't rush it," I replied; "they're looking for that; and if one now went forward they would shoot him down straight—and what's to follow? They come aft, and how can we hold them? But we must get the skipper awake, or they'll knock him on the head while he sleeps."
Mary had listened, shivering with the night cold; but she had a word to add, and its wisdom was no matter for dispute.
"If I went," she said, "what could they do to me?"
We were all silent.
"I'm going now," she said; "while I'm talking to them they won't be looking for you."
"Certainly, we could follow up," I added, "and might get them down if you held them in talk; but don't you fear?"
She laughed, and gave answer by running up the companion-way, and standing at the top; while we cocked our pistols, and crept after her. Then we lay flat to the deck, as she ran noiselessly amidships, and into the very centre of the five men. To our astonishment, they gave a great howl of terror at the sight of her—for it lay so dark that she seemed but a thing of shadow hovering upon the ship—and bolted headlong forward; while we rushed in a body to the hurricane deck, and faced Paolo. He turned very white, and would have opened his lips; but Dan served him as the other; and hit him with his pistol, so that he rolled senseless off the narrow bridge, and we heard the thud of his head against the iron of the engine-room hatch. He had scarce fallen when Mary, with the laugh still upon her lips, reeled at the sight of him, and fell fainting in my arms. I knocked at the skipper's door, but he was already on his feet, and passed me to the bridge, where I laid the swooning girl on the sofa in the chart-room.
The skipper got the whole situation at the first look, and acted in his usual silence. He re-entered his own cabin, and came to us again with a couple of rifles, which he loaded. We were now all crouching together by the wheel amidships, for Mary had recovered, and insisted that I should leave her, and we waited for the heavy black clouds to lift off the moon; but the fore-deck lay dark ahead of us; and we could not tell whether the men who had fled had gone below, or were crouching behind the galley, and the skylights of the fore-cabins. Nor could we hear any sound of them, although the skipper hailed them twice. He was for going forward at once; but we held back until the light came, and then by the full moon we saw dark shadows across the hatch. The men were behind the galley, as we thought—the eight of them.
The skipper hailed them again.