“There, that will do,” said Gascoyne, resigning the helm to Scraggs. “You can keep her as she goes; there’s plenty of water now and no fear of that big bully following us. Meanwhile, I will go below and see to the welfare of our passengers.”
Gascoyne was wrong in supposing that the Talisman would not follow. She could not, indeed, follow in the same course, but the moment that Mulroy observed that the pirate had passed the shoals in safety, he stood inshore, and, without waiting to pick up the gig, traversed the channel by which they had entered the bay. Then, trusting to the lead and to his knowledge of the general appearance of shallows, he steered carefully along until he cleared the reefs and finally stood out to sea.
In less than half-an-hour afterwards, the party on shore beheld the two vessels disappear among the black storm-clouds that gathered over the distant horizon.
Chapter Eighteen.
The Goat’s Pass—An Attack, A Bloodless Victory, and a Sermon.
When Ole Thorwald was landed at the foot of that wild gorge in the cliffs, which has been designated the Goat’s Pass, he felt himself to be an aggrieved man, and growled accordingly.
“It’s too bad o’ that fire-eating fellow to fix on me for this particular service,” said he to one of the settlers named Hugh Barnes, a cooper, who acted as one of his captains; “and at night too, just as if a man of my years were a cross between a cat, (which everybody knows can see in the dark,) and a kangaroo, which is said to be a powerful leaper, though whether in the dark or the light I don’t pretend to know—not being informed on the point. Have a care, Hugh. It seems to me you’re going to step into a quarry hole, or over a precipice. How my old flesh quakes, to be sure! If it was only a fair flat field and open day, with any odds you like against me, it would be nothing; but this abominable Goat’s — Hah! I knew it. Help! hold on there! murder!”
Ole’s sudden alarm was caused by his stumbling in the dark over the root of a shrub which grew on the edge of, and partly concealed, a precipice, over which he was precipitated, and at the foot of which his mangled and lifeless form would soon have reposed, had not his warlike forefathers, being impressed with the advantage of wearing strong sword-belts, furnished the sword which Ole wore with such a belt as was not only on all occasions sufficient to support the sword itself, but which, on this particular occasion, was strong enough to support its owner when he was suspended from, and entangled with, the shrubs of the cliff.