“Well, massa, you know best.”
So we tugged at the sable heroine, and first one leg came home out of the tenacious clay, with a plop, then the other was drawn out of the quagmire. We then relieved her of the paddles, and each taking hold of one of the poor half-dead creature’s hands, we succeeded in getting down to the beach, about half a mile to leeward of the entrance to the cove. We found the canoe there, plumped Nancy stem foremost into the bottom of it for ballast, gathered all our remaining energies for a grand shove, and ran her like lightning into the surf, till the water flashed over and over us, reaching to our necks. Next moment we were both swimming, and the canoe, although full of water, beyond the surf, rising and falling on the long swell. We scrambled on board, set Nancy to bale with Peter’s hat, seized our paddles, and skulled away like fury for ten minutes right out to sea, without looking once about us, until a musket-shot whistled over our heads, then another, and a third; and I had just time to hold up a white handkerchief, to prevent a whole platoon being let drive at us from the deck of his Britannic Majesty’s schooner Gleam, lying-to about a cable’s length to windward of us, with the Firebrand a mile astern of her out at sea. In five minutes we got on board of the former.
“Mercy on me, Tom Cringle, and is this the way we are to meet again?” said old Dick Gasket, as he held out his large, bony, sunburnt hand to me. “You have led me a nice dance, in a vain attempt to redeem you from bondage, Tom; but I am delighted to see you although I have not had the credit of being your deliverer—very glad to see you, Tom; but come along man, come down with me, and let me rig you, not quite a Stultze’s fit, you know, but a jury rig you shall have, as good as Dick Casket’s kit can furnish forth, for really you are in a miserable plight, man.”
“Bad enough indeed. Mr Casket—many thanks though—bad enough, as you say; but I would that your boats crew were in so good a plight.”
Mr Gasket looked earnestly at me—“Why, I have my own misgivings, Cringle; this morning at day-break, the Firebrand in company, we fell in with an armed felucca. It was dead calm, and she was out of gun shot, close in with the land. The Firebrand immediately sent the cutter on board full armed, with instructions to me to man the launch, and arm her with the boat-gun, and then to send both boats to overhaul the felucca. I did so, standing in as quickly as the light air would take me, to support them; the felucca all this while sweeping in shore as fast as she could pull. But the boats were too nimble for her, and our launch had already saluted her twice from the six pounder in the bow, when the sea-breeze came thundering down in a white squall, that reefed our gaff-topsail in a trice, and blew away a whole lot of light sails, like so many paper-kites. When it cleared away, the devil a felucca, boat, or any thing else, was to be seen. Capsized they could not have been, for all three were not likely to have gone that way; and as to any creek they could have run into, why we could see none. That they had pulled in shore, however, was our conclusion; but here have we been, the whole morning, firing signal guns every five minutes without success.”
“Did you hear no firing after the squall?” said I.
“Why, some of my people thought they did, but it was that hollow, tremulous, reverberating kind of sound, that it might have been thunder; and the breeze blew too strong to have allowed us to hear musketry a mile and a half to windward. I did think I saw some smoke rise, and blow off now and then, but” “But me no buts, Master Richard Casket; Peter Mangrove here, as well as myself, saw your people pursue the felucca into the lion’s den, and I fear they have been crushed in his jaws.” I briefly related what we had seen—Casket was in great distress.
“They must have been taken, Cringle. The fools! to allow themselves to be trepanned in this way. We must stand out and speak the corvette. All hands make sail!”
I could not help smiling at the grandeur of Dick’s emphasis on the all, when twenty hands, one-third of them boys, and the rest landsmen, scrambled up from below, and began to pull and haul in no very seamanlike fashion. He noticed it.
“A—h, Tom, I know what you are grinning at, but I fear it has been no laughing matter to my poor boats crew—all my best hands gone, God help me!”