“Well, as we are to have no fighting, I suppose, I will just go and relieve the anxiety of my little girl,” said the colonel, whose good humour was now in the ascendant.
No sooner did his niece see him than she flew into his arms, and kissed his cheek affectionately—an example Marianna, in the exuberance of her joy at finding there was to be no fighting, was nearly imitating.
“Oh, dear uncle, I am so glad that there is no danger to be encountered. You cannot tell how anxious I have been.”
“Well, missie, since you don’t like the cabin you shall come on deck and see what next takes place; we are going to have some visitors, it appears.” Saying this, he gallantly placed a shawl on her shoulders, and gave his hand to lead her on deck.
While the boat of the speronara was approaching, three or four of the Zodiac’s crew were collected by the foremost gun, watching her progress with no little interest. Two of them were regular salts of the old school, who still delighted in ear-rings and pigtails, though, in compliment to the degenerate taste of the times, they wore the latter ornaments much smaller than they had done in their younger days. They were prime seamen, and fellows who were ready to go down with their colours flying rather than strike to an enemy.
“You have heard tell on the Flying Dutchman, of course, Bill,” said Jem Marline, casting a look to windward at the speronara, and hitching up his trousers, while he squirted a stream of tobacco-juice through the port.
“On course,” answered Bill Rullock, “I haven’t been to sea near thirty years without, messmate.”
“Did you ever cast eyes on the chap, though?” asked Jem.
“Can’t say as how I have,” answered Bill. “But there’s many they say who has, and few who ever lived to tell of it. But what was you thinking on, Jem?”
“Why you see, Bill,” replied his chum, “I don’t altogether like the circumbendibus ways of that ere chap to windward. You see, first in Malta harbour, we falls in with him or one like him, for I don’t say, mind you, that that ere craft is the same which nearly ran foul on us yesterday; then out he goes right ahead of us, and then just as it’s got dark, down he comes again, and wants to send a boat aboard us. Now you see as how that’s the thing I don’t in no manner of ways approve on. If I was our skipper, I would send a round shot right into the boat, sooner than any of his people should step on this deck. That’s just the trick the cursed Dutchman’s up to.”