About a hundred yards from the mouth of the harbour there lay a small islet—a mere rock. Here Sam resolved to leave the pirate guard, none of whom had been quite killed—indeed two of them had tried unsuccessfully to rise during the fight.
“You see,” said Sam, as he steered for the rock, “we don’t want to have either the doctoring or the killing of such scoundrels. They will be much better with their friends, who will be sure to swim off for them—perhaps use our raft for the purpose, which they will likely find, sooner or later.”
They soon ranged up alongside of the island, and in a few minutes the bodies of the pirates were landed and laid there side by side. While they were being laid down, the man who had fought with Robin made a sudden and furious grasp at Johnson’s throat with one hand, and at his knife with the other, but the seaman was too quick for him. He felled him with a blow of his fist. The others, although still alive, were unable to show fight.
Then, hoisting the mainsail, and directing their course to the northward, our adventurers slipped quietly over the sea, and soon left Pirate Island far out of sight behind them.
Chapter Twenty One.
Departure from Pirate Island and Hopeful News at Sarawak.
The vessel of which Robin and his friends had thus become possessed, was one of those numerous native pirate-ships which did, and we believe still do, infest some parts of the Malay Archipelago—ships which can assume the form and do the work of simple trading-vessels when convenience requires, or can hoist the black flag when circumstances favour. It was not laden with anything valuable at the time of its capture. The slaves who wrought at the oars when wind failed, were wretched creatures who had been captured among the various islands, and many of them were in the last stage of exhaustion, having been worked almost to death by their inhuman captors, though a good many were still robust and fresh.
These latter it was resolved to keep still in fetters, as it was just possible that some of them, if freed, might take a fancy to seize the ship and become pirates on their own account. They were treated as well as circumstances would admit of, however, and given to understand that they should be landed and set free as soon as possible. Meanwhile, no more work would be required of them than was absolutely necessary. Those of them who were ill were freed at once from toil, carefully nursed by Letta and doctored by Sam.