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If you don't stand by me, the chance is gone. "'Cap'n Dinshaw, says I to him, 'I'll stand by if I can be any help, lose money or no. If me and my schooner's what you need, why, she's lyin' off the breakwater, and I'm your man. And Peth, my mate, he speaks up, and says to him: 'Dinny, don't you fret none, but leave it to Jarrow. He's the man to tie to if ye need help.
The midshipman uttered an ejaculation expressive of the utter disgust which he felt as they neared the schooner's side. "What is it? What's the matter?" cried the lieutenant; and then his countenance changed. "Back water!" he exclaimed, as he turned away his head. "How horrible!" Then, altering his order, he cried, "Row row, my lads pull!"
No sooner was the last thrilling fear of danger past, however, than my faculties went utterly relaxed; and when I felt the cool breezes of the Pacific playing around my fevered brow, and heard the free waves rippling at the schooner's prow, as we left the hated island behind us, my senses forsook me, and I fell in a swoon upon the deck.
The blank sea itself grew desirable under such skies; and wherever the trade-wind blows, I know no better country than a schooner's deck. But for the tugging anxiety as to the journey's end, the journey itself must thus have counted for the best of holidays.
Grey and Billy Wise and two other men did the same, and let fly among the enemy. In another instant we were under the schooner's quarter. The bowman hooked on. Without asking leave, up we scrambled, and, cutlass in hand, in spite of boarding-pikes thrust at us, and pistols flashed in our faces, began to play heartily about us among the very much astonished Frenchmen.
Dick produced a dollar bill, and the boys commenced to row with all the power at their command. In the meantime the first rowboat had reached the schooner's side and the men and the sailor had gone on hoard. The boat was tied fast to the stern and orders were given to the captain of the tug to go ahead. "Stop! stop! You rascals!" cried Tom, as the schooner commenced to move down the Hudson.
It glittered and grinned maliciously at us in the sunshine; it winked mysteriously through the stifling fog; it stretched itself like a prostrate giant, with huge, portentous shoulders and shadowy limbs, right across our course; or danced gleefully in broken groups in the little schooner's wake.
Numbers had been cut down some jumped overboard, but the greater portion ran below and sang out lustily for quarter. Strange to say, not a man of the Rover was hurt, while nearly fifty Frenchmen and Spaniards were killed and wounded. The moment the schooner's flag was hauled down, the Spanish boats made off; nor did they stop till they had disappeared within some harbour on the coast.
Blair told Skipper Freeman what the Admiral wanted, and the good man grinned hard. "Right, sir; your time's your own. I'll manage." The dusk drooped early; a fair breeze was blowing, and the swift schooner loitered with the smacks. Freeman sent up a rocket, the schooner's foresail was let over, and she rustled away through the squadron of brown-sailed craft.
I cannot stop to describe the scenes of gambling and fighting continually going on among the schooner's lawless crew, though their outbreaks of fury were generally repressed, before arriving at extremities, by the energy of the little captain. We got on tolerably well with them. Jack danced his hornpipe, I sang, and the other two men made themselves generally useful.
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