But what is he to do? For the third time he asks himself this question, still unable to answer it.
While still painfully cogitating, his brain labouring to grasp some feasible plan of defence against the threatened danger, he is warned of a change. Some words spoken tell of it. It is De Lara who speaks them.
“By the way, camarados, we’re not in a good position here. They may sight us too soon. To make things sure, we must drop on them before they can draw their weapons. Else some of us may get dropped ourselves.”
“Where could we be better? I don’t see. The shadow of this old boat favours us.”
“Why not crawl under it?” asks Calderon. “There Argus himself couldn’t see us.”
Harry Blew’s heart beats at the double-quick. His time seems come, and he already fancies four pistols to his head, or the same number of poniards pointed at his ribs.
It is a moment of vivid anxiety—a crisis dread, terrible, almost agonising.
Fortunately it is not of long duration, ending almost on the instant. He is relieved at hearing one of them say:
“No; that won’t do. We’d have trouble in scrambling out again. While about it they’d see or hear us, and take to their heels. You must remember, it’s but a step to where their boat will be waiting them, with some eight or ten of those big British tars in it. If they got there before we overtook them, the tables would be turned on us.”
“You’re right, Don Manuel,” rejoins De Lara; “it won’t do to go under the boat, and there’s no need for us to stay by it. Mira! yonder’s a better place—by that wall. In its shadow no one can see us, and the gringos must pass within twenty feet of it. It’s the very spot for our purpose. Have with me!”