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Mr Dabchick had just sung out this for the second time on getting back to the weather end of the bridge, when Captain Hankey, accompanied by Mr Gresham and a lot of the other officers, rushed on deck, some of them half dressed and buckling on their gear as they came hurrying along. `Old Hankey Pankey' made straight for the bridge, the first lieutenant close at his heels.
"The devil!" ejaculated Lieutenant Dabchick, in his flurry using a stronger expression than he would probably have done had `old Hankey Pankey' been on the quarter-deck, rushing into the chart-house on the bridge and snatching up a telescope, which he brought to bear on the horizon in the direction indicated by Adams in the foretop above, whose point of vantage, of course, gave him a wider range of view.
If the long-eared owl can remain and find a living all the year round in the copses on the downs, why should not the short-eared owl make a practice of what is its occasional custom, and nest in the fens and marshes? If the kingfisher can find a living and abundant fish in our rivers and brooks, why does the dabchick migrate?
"Mr Dabchick," he called out, "I'm going to cast you off, and you will pull straight for the shore and capture those dhows as best you can, while I will cover your advance with the guns of the ship. Recollect, you are in command of the expedition and that Mr Doyle in the cutter, and Mr Chisholm in the whaler, are under your orders; so, you can do as you think best when you get alongside them.
We were beaten back into the cutter twice, after some half a dozen of us had been wounded, some desperately; and then the second cutter, which could not manage to board her astern, coming up to our help and sheering in alongside us, our gallant leader Mr Dabchick determined on one grand final rush.
We saw a nest built on the edge of the lake, rising and falling with the water, but kept in place by the stalks of shrubs about it. A great brown bird, with spotted breast, rose from it. I recognized it as the dabchick. The Indians say that this bird was once a human being, wife to an Indian with whom she quarrelled. He was transformed to the great blue heron, and stalks about the marshes.
The whaler assisted us at this job, the second cutter being sent back to the ship by Mr Dabchick to convey all our wounded comrades thither for medical treatment, as well as the body of Mr Doyle, and that of another poor fellow who had not gone overboard; we ourselves not yet returning to the Mermaid, not rejoining her until our task was done, late in the afternoon.
"Larrikins," said I, whispering in his ear, as we stood up together just in the rear of Mr Dabchick, balancing myself on one of the thwarts forward, being about to make another spring for the side of the big dhow, while Larry shoved a cartridge hastily into the breech of his rifle, and was in the act of taking a pot shot at a chap who seemed to be the skipper of the batilla and had a nose on him like the beak of a Brazilian parrot, "little Dabby means business!"
This did not stop us, though. "Shift over, bow and the next man," shouted out Mr Dabchick. "Now, all together, pull away, my lads, and let us go for them!"
Their retreat to the port whence they had sailed was cut off by the pinnace; and, as their only refuge now when we overhauled them would be the rock-bound coast lying between Binna and Ras Hafim, they were, as I heard Mr Dabchick say to the coxswain, `between the devil and the deep sea!
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