‘Any luggage?’
‘No,’ I answered.
‘Nothen portable aboard worth carrying off, is there?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, cursing him in my heart for the delay these questions involved; ‘there are several hams, bottles of fine wine, cheeses, and the like below.’
‘Odds niggers! we’ll have ’em then,’ he exclaimed; and in an instant he was in the wreck’s chains, wriggling over the side and calling to one of his fellows to follow him. They hung in the wind a moment, staring their hardest at Miss Temple and myself; then said the short square man in white: ‘Where be the goods, master?’
I pointed to the hatch in the deck-house, and directed them to what I called the pantry. But nothing could have induced me to leave the deck. As they disappeared I stepped to the side where the bulwarks were gone.
‘Bring the boat close under, my lads,’ I exclaimed to the two fellows in her, ‘and stand by to receive the lady.’
The hull was rolling gently, with just enough of depression to render a jump into the little fabric as it rose very easy and safe. ‘Now, Miss Temple,’ I cried. She sprang without an instant’s hesitation, was caught by one of the sailors, and in a jiffy the pair of us were snug in the stern sheets side by side.
The two men could not take their eyes off us. They surveyed us with countenances of profound astonishment, running their gaze over Miss Temple as though she were some creature of another world: as well they might, indeed, seeing the contrast between the groaning, mutilated, smoking hull and this girl leaping from her deck in the choice and elegant attire of the highest fashion, as the two poor devils would imagine—for what eye would they have for the disorder of her apparel?—and her hands, breast, and ears sparkling with jewels of value and splendour.
‘Are ye English, sir?’ said one of them, a middle-aged man, of an honest cast of countenance, with minute eyes deep sunk in his head, and a pair of greyish whiskers uniting at his throat.