Mr. Trevelyan had been snubbed nearly as much, and he was furious, and said, "That fat little beast Rashleigh has been spinning yarns, that's what it is." The Captain was certainly rather nicer when he came down into the gunroom after dinner and made a speech; but no one ever says nasty things in a speech at that time of night, so it didn't nearly "make up".
Still, everything else was so jolly, and it was so glorious to know that Mr. Hoffman had escaped from the fire after all, and that we had found out where Sally and her father were, and that we were actually on our way to rescue them, that we couldn't feel miserable for long.
Next morning Mr. Trevelyan sent for Jim and myself in his cabin.
"I told you what it was," he burst out, red with rage. "It was that overfed, bloated hog! Look at his report! The Commander has just given it to me to read. I'm going off to tell him our side of the show," and he rushed off, but came back again redder than ever. "I'm to wait till I'm cooler, as if I wasn't as cool as a cucumber in an ice chest;" and he stamped about his cabin.
Later on, however, we were all sent for, one after the other, and told the Commander our own accounts of what happened, and some time afterwards were ordered to send in our own reports in writing.
Neither Jim nor I went ashore with the Captain that first night when he blew a hole in the tramp steamer, and we knew that it was because he was still angry with us. We would have given our skins to go; but we both pretended that we didn't mind, and that as the night was so cold and awfully wet, it was jolly lucky that we hadn't gone. We determined to have a jolly good feed, and then turn in early and get a jolly good night's rest, and we yarned with Dicky and tried to pretend that we were having a good time. It wasn't much of a success, however, and we soon found ourselves on the fore bridge in the rain, looking at the flashes and then waiting for the "booms" from the guns with a beastly feeling inside, because we weren't there ourselves. We got just as wet and cold as they did, almost.
I was more lucky than Jim, because I did have something to do, and went with Mr. Trevelyan very early in the morning to bring off Mr. Hoffman's Chinaman. We had to hang about near a big rock at the back of the island, and directly it was light "stand by" for a piece of red bunting to be waved from shore. We must have been there for more than an hour, and thought that he had either gone back to Mr. Whitmore in the steam cutter, or perhaps been collared by the pirates. When we did see it wave, we fetched him off pretty quickly, and shoved along back to the Vig just as hard as we could go. You see, we were certain that he had good news, because Mr. Trevelyan drew pictures of a thin little man and a girl and showed them to him, and he seemed to understand, and nodded his head and pointed to the island. He kept on saying "Vely good" all the way off to the ship. I don't think he knew any more English words.
On our way back we watched the six-inch gun firing, and dropping her shells or shot all over the place. Some of them fell very close to the Vigilant, and we wondered why Captain Lester didn't reply.
"How would you like to be there?" Mr. Trevelyan asked.
"Ra—ther!" I told him, and he smiled. "It's all right if you're doing something yourself, but it's a jolly different thing when you're simply waiting for them," and that made me think of my horrible funk when those two shore guns had fired point blank at the Sally, and I was rather sorry I had spoken.