No one objecting, the four separate from the side of the boat and glide silently as spectres across the strip of sandy beach, their forms gradually growing indistinct in the fog, at length altogether disappearing beneath the sombre shadow of the wall.
Chapter Thirty Five.
Crusaders, to the Rescue!
“What am I to do!”
It is the ex-man-o’-war’s man, still lying under the launch, who thus interrogates himself. He has put the question for the fourth time that night, and now as emphatically as ever, but less despairingly.
True, the conspiring assassins have only stepped aside to a lurking place from which they may more conveniently pounce upon their quarry, and be surer of striking it. But their changed position has left him free to change his; which he at once determines upon doing. Their talk has told him where the man-of-war’s boat will be awaiting to take the officers back to their ship. He knows the new wharf referred to, the very stair at which the Crusaders have been accustomed to bring to.
It may be the cutter with her full crew of ten—or it may be but the gig. No matter which. There cannot be fewer than two oarsmen, and these will be sufficient. A brace of British tars, with himself to make three, and the officers to tot up five—that will be more than a match for four Spanish Californians. Four times four, thinks Harry Blew, even though the sailors, like himself, be unarmed, or with nothing but their knives and boat-hooks.
He has no fear, if he can but bring it to an encounter of this kind. The question is, can he do so? And first, can he creep out from under the launch, and steal away unobserved?