"No, sir—no, sir—only knocked down by the wind of the shot, sir—wind of the shot, sir—ho, ho, hoo!"
"Wind of a pistol bullet no bigger than a pea? For shame, Toby!—fright, man, fright."
But we had no time for reflection; for the schooner was now right off the mouth of the small bay, apparently clear for action. She was a man-of-war, beyond all question; and I was still convinced she was the Spider. Presently she hauled round the cocoa-nut-covered cape, and took up a position, so far as I could judge, opposite the mouth of the creek. Oh, what would I not have given to have been on board of her! But this was impossible.
The blue and yellow private signal, that Adderfang had sent us, and which had been kept flying until this moment, was now hauled down, close past my nose.
"Spider!—to be sure that is the Spider; and no wonder she should have peppered us so beautifully, Master Toby, with such a voucher for our honesty aloft; with this same accursed signal flying, that she had seen the Waterwraith hoist. There! the murder is out. What conclusion could De Walden have come to, but that we were birds of a feather?"
"Ay, ay—true enough—hooro! hooro! hooro!" rumbled Tobias, sweating like a pig with downright fear.
Tooraloo and I now hurried ashore in the boat, without well knowing what to do, and ran to the ridge, to see, if possible, what became of Lennox. The boat wherein he was, sheered for a moment alongside the schooner, the Mosca, apparently giving orders, and then pulled directly for the Midge, where the people got out, dragging poor Lennox along with them.
"Heaven have mercy on us!" I exclaimed, shuddering. "What can they be going to do with the poor fellow?"
I was not long in doubt; for the moment they got on the deck, the barbarians cast him headlong down the main hatchway, which was immediately battened down, and then hoisted in the boat.
The crew of the schooner below me, whose deck, as already described, was hid by the high bank, were now busy, I could hear, in clearing for action; and several of them were piling up large stones, and making fast hawsers from her mastheads to trees at the top of the cliff near where I stood, that, in the event of her being carried below, it should be impossible to tow her out,—while the stones would prove formidable missiles when launched from above. I also perceived a boat at the foam-fringed sandy spit opposite the cocoa-nut trees, that formed one side of the narrow entrance, whose crew were filling bags with sand, and forming a small battery, with embrasures, for two carronades, that had been already landed, and lay like two black seeds on the white beach.