"On deck both watches," shouted Beverley. "Close up with the answering pennant."
The order was obeyed in double-quick time, the watch below turning out in a state of attire that could not by any stretch of the imagination be termed uniform. Harborough, stopping only to don oilskin coat and sea-boots over his pyjamas, came on deck.
"Serve out the arms, Mr. Beverley," he said, "and hoist a signal saying we are sending a boat. Mr. Villiers, will you take half a dozen armed men and proceed to yonder vessel?"
Almost as soon as the signal flags GTM—"I am sending a boat"—were toggled and hoisted, the Titania's whaler was swung outboard ready for lowering, and under power the yacht rapidly bore down upon the mutinous schooner.
"Golly!" exclaimed Pete, who, in the midst of preparing breakfast, had answered to the hail for all hands on deck. "Dat's the ole Lucy M. Partington."
Before the Titania had entirely lost way the whaler's rounded bilges hit the water with a resounding smack. The lower blocks of the falls were disengaged, and the bowman adroitly fended off.
"Give way, lads!" ordered Villiers.
Fifty steady strokes sufficed to lay the boat alongside the schooner's port quarter, from which a rope-ladder had been dropped by her now considerably-relieved skipper.
Leaving one hand in the whaler, Villiers and the rest of the boat's crew swarmed up the side and gained the Lucy M. Partington's poop. The mutiny was over. The rebellious hands had been overawed by the sight of the approaching armed boat's crew.
The Old Man, a typical New Englander, with a goatee beard and huge leather sea-boots (Villiers found himself wondering how the skipper could wear heavy foot-gear on a hot day like that), left his strategical position, to wit, a round house abaft the mizen, and was bellowing incoherencies at a knot of sullen seamen clustered under the break of the raised fo'c'sle. With him were the two mates and three apprentices, who looked now as if they were enjoying the scene, and a couple of grizzled, bald-headed seamen.