Vytal nodded. “Quick, then!” And in another instant they had started out in the small boat upon their errand of rescue.
The sea, running higher and higher, tossed about the stanch little craft like a cockle-shell, but the brawny arms of the three rowers, holding her stem to the waves, managed to urge her slowly forward. The fly-boat now lay alongside the Admiral, almost within rope-throw, and both vessels hung as close as could be in the wind, their bowsprits bobbing tipsily, their canvas half empty and rattling.
The rowers strained their eyes and hallooed loudly, but there was no sight of the missing man nor any sound in answer save the flap, flap of the great square sails, the rush of the wind, the crash of the spray from broken foam-crests, and shouts from the swaying decks.
The rowers, now under the Admiral’s stern, were pointing the nose of their sea-toy toward the fly-boat. “Roger hath perished,” said Hugh, hoarsely. “God save his brave soul!”
And then, in weird contrast to the grave words, there came to the ears of the three men a laugh and an incoherent call out of the near darkness. It was as though the blade of Hugh’s oar had spoken. In amazement the men ceased rowing and gazed toward the black stern, from whose invisible water-line the sound had undoubtedly come. All steerage of the cock-boat being momentarily neglected, she swung round until a wave, catching her abeam, with all but disastrous results, washed her yet nearer to the grim hull. “Have a care!” cried the voice; “hold off!” And the rowers saw a dark thing bobbing up and down close to the ship. In another moment a man, grasping the end of a long rope in his hand, was clambering, with the aid of his comrades, into the small boat. “Did ye not see,” he said, immediately assisting at one of the oars, “that I grabbed a hawser as I jumped? ’Twas made fast, thank the Lord, somewhere amidships, and here have I been dangling out behind as comfortable as can be—” but his words belied him, for, even with the assertion on his lips, his last remaining strength failed suddenly, and the inimitable Roger Prat fell back senseless.
“To the fly-boat—quick!” said Vytal.
The cockle-shell was now but a dancing shadow, only a little darker than the sea to those who looked down on it from the Admiral’s stern far above. Yet in the eyes of one man, at least, that riotous black spot was a thing by all means to be avoided. “Simon, it is the solution of our problem. That man you say is John Vytal, and, I add, the most cursed mischief-maker under heaven. Had I known they were coming, he and his slavish crew, we might have been driven to no such pass.” The speaker lowered his voice and went on as he had begun, in the Spanish language. “But the chance is ours—yours.”
“How mine?” The question issued with a shivering sound from the other’s teeth.
“Let me see. One thousand crowns,” returned St. Magil, still leaning over the bulwark to gaze down like an evil buzzard on the bobbing shadow beneath him, “and another thousand—and, if it must be, yet another thousand.” He turned, smiling, to note the effect of his offer. “All this if you leave that insignificant cock-boat behind us, and it comes not safe to Virginia.”