“Sit upon it, for I am about to send.”
I entered my berth and brought out a chart of the continent of New Holland. I carried it to the table on the same side on which the lady had seated herself, and spread it, putting, as I well remember, a metal mug at each corner to keep the curled sheet flat. I then stepped to a scuttle and peered through it, and descried the sail of the boat close in with the island. I turned to the table again and called to Jimmy.
“Go now and send Teach here,” and when he was gone I overhung the chart in a posture of anxious scrutiny; though in this while I several times glanced at the lady Aurora, who was sitting just behind me, and observed that she sat very still, her face as composed as at any time since I had known her, her eyes bent upon a book which she had taken from the table before sitting. The motion of the brig was gentle; the cabin became warm, almost hot; a little while before I descended I had looked through the skylight at Jimmy, who stood beneath, and he had quietly closed and secured the frames.
Teach came down, and behind him was Jimmy. He descended the steps without the least manner of suspicion. He wore a round hat, and his feet were naked, the bottoms of his trousers being turned up midway the height of the calves of his legs. I bade him uncover in the presence of a lady; he asked pardon, and threw his hat down upon the deck.
“Here’s a chart of New Holland,” said I, pointing to it. “D’ye know anything of the coast down Port Jackson way?”
“No, sir,” said he.
“Where’s this brig to be wrecked? Come you here.” He came to my side, and I put my finger upon the line that denoted the coast near Port Jackson, holding my left hand behind me. “All hereabouts is wild ground, I reckon—and if the brig’s to be stranded, the spot should be within a comfortable tramp of the town of Sydney,” and as I pronounced these words I motioned with my left hand, on which, as swiftly as you fetch a breath, the lady Aurora whipped a big bag, thickened for the face with wadding, over the head of Teach, dragging it down to his shoulders and holding it there, and all as nimbly as the hangman pulls down the cap over the malefactor’s face. In the same instant of her doing this I grasped Teach by his right arm and Jimmy seized him by his left, and pulling out a pair of handcuffs from my pocket I brought the fellow’s wrists together and manacled him.
His first struggles were furious; but how should he be able to help himself in the grasp of two men, each of whom was out and away stronger than he? He kicked and plunged with frantic violence, but he could utter no sound. He was fairly suffocated by the thickly-lined bag which Miss Aurora had whipped down over his head.
Not an instant was to be lost; moreover, I had no intention to kill the man, though I reckoned by the gathering faintness in the capers he cut that his senses were going. Grasping him by the arms Jimmy and I dragged him aft and thrust him into a spare berth that lay between mine and the cabin I had occupied in Greaves’s time. Miss Aurora followed and handed me a gag of her own manufacture. I pulled the cap off the man and found him nearly gone; we sat him on a locker with his back against the ship’s side and I gagged him, taking care to see that the nostrils were clear. So there he was, gagged, handcuffed, and very nearly dead, and there was nothing to fear from him at present.
I shut the door of the berth and went again to the chart, while Miss Aurora sat behind me upon the bag as before. I slipped a second pair of handcuffs from my left into my right pocket, and then told Jimmy to send Travers below.