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The most prominent was the picture of the sinking ship which we had seen go down; but in addition I beheld the agonised countenances of the murdered crew some imploring mercy, others battling for life, and others yielding hopelessly to their fate. Among them, to my greater horror, I thought I saw Mr Brand and Ben Yool.
Mr Callard himself had his duties to attend to, so that he could not accompany us. Ben Yool had been left with the schooner, so our party consisted of Mr McRitchie, Cousin Silas, Jerry, and I, not forgetting old Surley. He always kept close to us, suspecting, perhaps, if the natives caught him, they might cook and eat 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.
Wel, we wint an turned up the hole kuntry after that, an' got heeps o goold. yool niver belaive it there was nugits o' all sises from a pay to a pitaity.
"There they come, the black scoundrels!" exclaimed Ben Yool. "Ten, fifteen, twenty, there are thirty of them altogether. They'll give us no little trouble if they once get alongside. However, they think that they've only got their own countrymen, so to speak, to deal with. They'll find themselves out in their reckoning, I hope."
The arrangement was soon made; and Yool and Cockle, having unlashed my limbs, begged my pardon, and complimented me on the daring and agility I had displayed on this my first climb aloft. This adventure, as I took the treatment I received good humouredly, made me capital friends with all the seamen, and I found that there were not kinder-hearted or better men on board than Yool and Cockle.
I did not remark that two seamen, the oldest hands on board, were at the same time deliberately mounting the fore-shrouds. Just as I reached the fore-topmast cross-trees, they were up to me. "You han't paid your footing up here, young master," said one, old Ben Yool by name. He spoke in a gruff voice, as if he had not a soft particle in his whole composition.
"I thought how it would be when I saw the nightcap on the top of the Horn," muttered old Ben Yool. "We shall have a sneezer before we have done with it, and it may be this day month won't see us round the Cape." Old Ben's prognostications were not very pleasant, for we were anxious to be round the Cape among the wonders we expected to behold in the Pacific.
We began to fear that, as he had not hands to hold on by, he must have been washed overboard when the heavy sea struck the ship which had laid her on her beam ends. "You'd better not be scuttling about the decks, young gentlemen," said Ben Yool. "Another of those big seas may come, and then if you are caught by it you may be carried away further off than you'll like."
Ben Yool had seen the accident from a distance, and now came hurrying up to us. He was inclined to scold Jerry for the fright he had given him. I believe truly that the old man loved us as much as if we had been his own sons, and would have been miserable had any accident happened to either of us.
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