“Not a moment to be lost, Robin,” said Sam Shipton hurriedly, as he led the way back to the tavern, where old Meerta and blind Bungo, aided by Letta, had already cleared away all evidence of the late feast, leaving only three tin cups and three pewter plates on the table, with viands appropriate thereto.
“Ha! you’re a knowing old lady,” exclaimed Sam, “you understand how to help us, I see.”
“Me tink so!” replied Meerta, with an intelligent nod. “On’y us t’ree here. All de pyrits gone away. Dem sinners on’y come here for a feed—p’r’aps for leetil poodre. Soon go away.”
“Just so,” said Sam, “meanwhile we will hide, and return after they are gone, or, better still, if you, Letta, and Bungo will come and hide with us, I’ll engage to lay a train of powder from the barrels inside to somewhere outside, and blow the reptiles and the whole mountain into the sea! There’s powder enough to do it.”
“You tink me one divl?” demanded the old woman indignantly. “No, some o’ dem pyrits not so bad as each oder. You let ’em alone; me let you alone.”
This gentle intimation that Meerta had their lives in her hand, induced Sam to ask modestly what she would have him do.
“Go,” she replied promptly, “take rifles, swords, an’ poodre. Hide till pyrits go ’way. If de finds you—fight. Better fight dan be skin alive!”
“Unquestionably,” said Sam, with a mingled laugh and shudder, in which his companions joined—as regards the shudder at least, if not the laugh.
Acting promptly on the suggestion, Sam armed himself and his comrades each with a good breech-loading rifle, as much ammunition as he could conveniently carry, and an English sword. Then, descending the mountain on the side opposite to the harbour they disappeared in the dark and tangled underwood of the palm-grove. Letta went a short distance with them.
“They won’t kill Meerta or blind Bungo,” she said, on the way down. “They’re too useful, though they often treat them badly. Meerta sent me away to hide here the last time the strange bad men came. She thinks I go hide to-night, but I won’t; so, good-night.”