And in a few words he gave them an account of the interview with Driscoll.
“So Antony’s in the cuddy of a boat at Spectacle Island,” he added, concluding. “And now, see here. Thank fortune Mrs. Eastman’s feelings can be spared, Antony saved, and yet the whole affair be kept strictly private. I shall wait, Captain, till the dead of night, when those fellows will all be asleep, and I hope drunk—all except the one in the boat—and then I shall run down in your craft, land, and capture the captured.”
“Bravo!” shouted Wentworth. “By Jove! I shall laugh fit to kill when we get hold of Antony.”
“We?” said Harrington, jestingly. “Why, are you going?”
“Am I going!” roared Wentworth. “Of course I am. Do you think I’d let you go alone?”
Captain Fisher, who had been sitting in silence, with his winter pippin face agrin, burst into hearty laughter.
“By the spoon of horn!” he exclaimed, “but this is a leetle the richest idee I ever heern tell on. But, John, look a-here. Siven of them fellers, you know. Sposin you find them in the boat all together, like Brown’s cows, when he had but one? What’ll you do then?”
“It’s not likely,” replied Harrington. “Men love their ease too much to be out in the night when it’s not necessary. For my own part, I think Atkins has managed this matter like a fool. Two men would have answered his purpose perfectly, and he puts eight there. I can’t imagine what he was thinking of.”
Mr. Atkins was thinking of Harrington, if Harrington could but have known it. The moment Mrs. Eastman had told him that Antony had been sheltered in her house, a feeling had come to him that the young scholar, whose dauntless temper he had some notion of, might possibly attempt a rescue, and he took his measures accordingly. This accounted, too, for Antony not being on board the Soliman.
“But look a-here, John,” pursued the Captain. “Satan’s niver onready to play ye a trick, an’ there’s no countin’ on what’s likely with him. Now sposin you find them siven fellers in the boat when you git down?”