"Look!" ejaculated Cardyke. "They're sinking the boats."
The three boats belonging to the Independencia, having completed their work of transferring the men and stores from the cruiser to the yacht, were promptly stove in, pigs of ballast being dropped into them to send them to the bottom.
"They've found the yacht's boats are better than their own," said Fielding. "They'll be——"
"They're off—by Jove!"
"So they are; and there are nearly eighty men of the pirate crew still on board, I should imagine. What's the game?"
"Cervillo's done a bunk with the rest of the oof," said the mid.
"Guess you've hit it, sonny," exclaimed Hiram B. Rutter. "Reckon we may as well get rid of this grease; 'tisn't necessary."
"He's off," said Fielding. "The yacht's gathering way. Won't there be a rumpus when the others find it out? I wonder where their eyes are."
For fully ten minutes the English officers and their companions watched the disappearing vessel. Then a chorus of shouts and curses on deck announced that the abandoned pirates had discovered they were tricked.
Not until the Serena disappeared beneath the horizon did the excited crew calm down. The majority drowned their woes in drink, while a few, realising the importance of fuel supply, brought the cruiser alongside the Hetty and emptied her cargo of oil into the Independencia's tanks. There was now sufficient fuel to take the crippled cruiser a thousand miles. Tito, who had been chosen captain by his shipmates, resolved to stand south, fall in with another vessel, and save the remainder of the crew in a similar manner to that adopted by the recreant Cervillo.