"All returned, sir," answered the gruff voice of one of the seamen.
"Anybody wounded?"
"Nobody hurt, saving the captain, who was shot dead," responded the same voice.
Don Christoval, with a stagger in his gait, stepped out of the boat on to the deck, calling to me to give him my hand, lest he should fall backward.
"Be quick, and sail away, Mr. Portlack," said he, hoarsely. "A wing of the house caught fire, but through no fault of ours—no! It was owing to the carelessness of some terrified servant within. Only one shot was fired; it was meant for me, and slew Captain Dopping, who was at my side. That fire was a terrible signal—it may still be burning: I do not know; all seemed in darkness when we gained the gap, but they rang a danger bell, a fearful summons that seemed to echo for miles and miles. Did you hear it here?" he cried, almost gasping with the rapidity of his utterance.
"No, sir."
"Mounted messengers will have been flying from place to place long ago," he continued; "they will send to Whitehaven, where, I heard our sailors say, there may be lying a Revenue cutter, or some more formidable ship of the State yet, to pursue us; therefore, for our lives' sake, Mr. Portlack, get the boat in and start at once."
He paused an instant to clasp his hands with an air of impassioned, theatrical appeal to me, then went below walking like a drunken man.
The bows of the boat were hastily hoisted into the gangway by means of a tackle called a burton. All hands of us then grasped the fabric, and dragged her bodily to her place on the deck. I could collect, by the motions of the men, that they were frightfully fatigued, but they worked with a will, as for their lives, indeed; well knowing—better knowing than I probably—what must be the fate of all hands of us if we were to be captured red-handed thus, with the house still on fire ashore for all we could tell—though I could now see no signs of the glow I had before observed—and with the dead body of the captain to fearfully testify to the audacious nature of this expedition.
Every stitch of sail the schooner carried was, cloth by cloth, expanded. Within ten minutes of the boat's return she was in her place on deck, the little topgallant-sail was being sheeted home, and La Casandra, under full breasts of canvas, was sliding out into the gloom south and west. Clouds had collected in the west; and if the moon still hung over the sea, she could not show her face. Our course brought the weak damp wind a little forward of the beam. This was the schooner's best point of sailing, and she slided through it with a nimbleness that I hoped would put her out of sight of land before daybreak.