“In that case I will go with you, Brand,” said the doctor, who was as plucky as anybody. “I still say, however, that we should be wiser remaining where we are till daylight.”
“No, no, doctor,” returned Cousin Silas; “you are not a fighting-man. Your life is too valuable to be risked. You stay on board and look after the lads.”
“But we want to go with you, Mr Brand!” exclaimed Jerry and I together; “you won’t leave us behind?”
“I daresay, boys!” answered Cousin Silas. “What account should I have to give to the captain if either of you got knocked on the head and I escaped? You remain on board the schooner. It will be daylight soon; and if I do not return before then, you’ll be able to see where to pick me up.”
“If you resolves to go, why, d’ye see, sir, I goes with you,” said Ben Yool, stepping up. “One of these brown chaps says he’ll go, and that’s all you want. To my mind, if we can frighten the villains from going on with their murderous work, we may do some good; but as to forcing them to hold their hands, we couldn’t do it if we were even to lay the little Dove alongside them.”
Mr Brand thanked Ben for his promptness in offering to support him, and accepted his services; and arming themselves, they both, without further delay, accompanied by a tall, strong Sandwich islander, lowered the schooner’s dinghy into the water.
“What I’d advise, sir, is this,” said Ben: “Let us get as close up to where the cries come from as we can without being seen, and then let us hail the vessel, or raft, or whatever it may be, in gruff voices, and say that if they don’t knock off their murdering work, and let the people they are harming go free, we will blow them all up into the sky. If they don’t heed us, we’ll shriek and cry, and make all sorts of noises, as if a thousand demons were about to board them; and, as people who are about any bad work are certain to have bad consciences, they’ll fancy that the noises are ten times louder and worse than they are. If that does not succeed, we must try some other dodge; we shall hit off something or other, I daresay.”
While Ben was thus delivering himself, Mr Brand was loading his pistols. All things being ready, they stepped into the boat and shoved off. They were immediately lost to sight in the thick darkness which surrounded us. Their oars had been muffled; but we could hear the gentle lap of the oars in the water for long afterwards, showing to what a distance sound could travel, and that the scene of the outrage we had been listening to might be further off than we supposed. As Mr Brand had taken the bearings of the Dove, and proposed pulling directly to the south-west, whence the sounds came, and directly in the eye of the wind, such as there was, which had shifted to that quarter, we knew that he would have no great difficulty in getting aboard us again. Still we could not help feeling very anxious about him. The plan, however, proposed by Ben Yool struck us as likely to prove as effectual as any that could be conceived;—much more so than had the little Dove herself appeared; for, as she did not measure more than twenty tons, she was not calculated by her size to command respect, especially as she had no guns on board, and we had only our rifles. Scarcely had the boat left the side of the schooner when the shrieks were repeated. They seemed louder, or at all events more distinct. We could no longer have any doubt that they were uttered by human beings in distress. Old Surley thought so too. He kept running about the deck in a state of great agitation, and then stretched out his neck, and howled in reply to the cry which reached his ears. We kept slowly gliding on under all sail, keeping as close to the wind as we could, so as to beat up in the direction of the sound. It had been arranged that we were to go about every quarter of an hour, so that Mr Brand would know our whereabouts and on what tack he was likely to find us on his return. Our ears were kept open to catch any fresh sound, and our eyes were looking about us in all directions, in case a break in the mist should reveal any object to us; but an hour passed away, and no other cry was heard. There was a little more wind, and it had shifted a point or so to the westward, and perhaps that prevented sounds reaching us, we thought. Another hour crept by, but still Mr Brand did not return. We began to be anxious about him. We constantly went to the binnacle lamp to look at our watches. It wanted but a short time to daylight. The doctor, I saw by his manner, was seriously alarmed about the party, though he said nothing to us. We fancied that we heard a hail, and then a shout and a cry; but we could not quite agree about it. We kept pacing the deck anxiously, tacking as we had been directed by Mr Brand; and thus the night wore on, and dawn once more broke over the world of waters.