“I like it much,” he replied. “You must get a good hand as a master, who knows these seas; or do you propose to go master yourself?”
“I am not so conceited with my seamanship as to trust entirely to myself,” I answered. “The idea has occurred to me, that you might like to go as master, and I am sure you would make a good one.”
“Nothing I should like better in the world,” he exclaimed in a tone of delight. “I assure you that I am most grateful to you for thinking of me. The life I have often had to lead under inferiors, often tyrannical, rude, and uneducated, has been very irksome, and has at times nearly driven me to desperation; but with you I shall have all the pleasures of a roving life, without any of the drawbacks I so much hate.”
“Well, then, it is settled, Fairburn,” I said, equally pleased with him. “We will not lose an instant, when we get into port, in looking after a vessel, and picking up a good crew.” So we went on, hour after hour, talking on the subject till the watch was worn out, and daylight began to appear.
“We must get into port first, however, on the old principle of catching a hare before cooking it,” he remarked, laughing.
A hail from the long-boat interrupted us. We were some little way astern, and we saw her lower her sail, the jolly-boat doing the same. We stood on till we got up to her.
“Down with your canvas—down!” exclaimed the captain vehemently—“Don’t you see that ahead?”
We had been quietly following the long-boat, and had not looked beyond her. We now did so, and by the uncertain light of the coming dawn, we could see the dark sails of several large prahus standing directly across our course from the eastward. Had we been a little farther advanced, we should have been directly under their stems. If they were pirates, our position was perilous in the extreme. The captain proposed that we should instantly put about, and pull away from them to the northward and east; but then it was argued that the moment the sun got up the flashing of our oar-blades in the water would inevitably betray us, and that our best mode of proceeding was to be perfectly quiet, so that they might pass without perceiving us. The last proposal was carried, Fairburn, whose opinion was always of weight, voting for it. The oars were accordingly laid in, and we all crouched down at the bottom of the boats, no one’s head being allowed to appear above the gunwales. We hoped thus, if the Malays should see the boats, that they would fancy they were without occupants, and would not think it worth their while to go out of their way to examine them. The canvas of the bulwark, at the bow, was lifted a little to enable one person to look through, in order to watch the proceedings of the prahus. Our preparations were made before it was quite light; and now came the most trying time, when the sun, as he rose from the water, should first shed his rays across its surface. That is the period when seamen of every nation are more particularly accustomed to take a steady scrutinising glance round the horizon, to see what ships or land may be in sight. We could observe the sails of the prahus gliding by to the westward like silent phantoms in the cold pale light of the morning. We were to the eastward of the greater part of the fleet, and we began to hope that all might pass us, when Fairburn and I simultaneously perceived three others, more to the north than the rest, and directly to the eastward of us. Being thus more to windward than the rest, they came down rapidly towards us.
“What shall we do now?” I asked of Fairburn. “If we stay where we are, they will scarcely miss us. If we pull on, we shall be directly to leeward of them, and they will certainly see us, and we cannot escape them.”
“To own the truth, I do not see that we have a chance of escape,” he whispered. “In attempting to pull away out of their course to the northward, we shall certainly be observed. We must make up our minds to the worst.”