“I must get the captain to let me take a boat to warn the crew of the ship of their danger, and to assist them if they are attacked,” he exclaimed. “We may get there before the prahus, which do not pull as fast as they can sail, and a few well-armed men may turn the scale against them; but I’ll have a look at them first.”
Taking the glass he sprang aloft. Directly afterwards the captain appeared and asked him what he was looking at. I told him.
“I hope we shall get a breeze, for if the pirates, as I suppose they are, see us boldly standing towards them, they will hesitate before they meddle with the wreck,” he remarked, now apparently as anxious about the vessel on shore as we had been. “It may have a good effect if we hoist a pendant and the Dutch flag and fire a gun. They will take us for a man-of-war, and probably be off again as fast as they can pull; but it is the breeze we want, the breeze! Without that we are helpless.”
The first mate soon came down from aloft and again proffered his request.
“I dare not give you leave,” answered the captain. “What could one or even two boats do against those prahus, with twenty or thirty well-armed men in each? You might be cut off, even before you could reach the wreck; and if you were on board, you would be able to do but little to defend her, as in the position she lies she could not work her guns if she had any.”
I was almost surprised at the way Uncle Jack pleaded to be allowed to go.
“It is impossible,” replied the captain, “I could not reconcile it to my conscience. We might lose half the ship’s company, and be unable to defend the brig ourselves.”
I never saw the first mate so put out as he was at this answer. He turned away and continued walking the deck with uneasy strides until he seemed almost beside himself. He again went aloft and stood watching the prahus through his glass, occasionally turning his eye round the horizon, and then he shouted, “A breeze! A breeze coming up from the south-west!” The next instant down he slid on deck.
The vessel’s head, which had been turning now to one point of the compass now to another, was fortunately just then turned in the right way.
The captain kept a sharp look-out in the direction from whence the wind was coming, to judge whether it was likely to be a strong or a light breeze.