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"Ah, I see," said the Reverend Mr Smythe approvingly, though in a very faint tone, walking off towards the poop-ladder with the lieutenant's aid, having evidently had enough of the ship's rolling.
You know how to make a prize's number, I suppose, when she has none." "I confess I do not, Sir Gervaise," answered Bunting, who had shown by his manner that he was at a loss. "Having no number in our books, one would be at a stand how to get at her, sir." "How would you do it, young man?" asked Sir Gervaise, who all this time was hanging on to the man-rope of the poop-ladder.
But, speedily as we had hurried, on mounting the poop-ladder and rushing towards the bitts at the foot of the mizzenmast to cast off the bunt- lines and clewlines of the trysail we found we had been already forestalled by an earlier arrival on the scene of action.
The young moon had, of course, set some time before; the sky had grown overcast and seemed to be threatening rain; the clouds were sweeping up from about south-south-west, and a light breeze, that seemed likely to freshen, was blowing from that direction, driving great masses of chill, wet fog along before it of so dense a character that it was scarcely possible to make out the foremast from the head of the poop-ladder.
"Captain Alphonse thereupon, seeing the coast clear, sang out for Housi, his second officer, and the boatswain, who he thought were away forward, to come up aft and join us, so that we might all be together, but instead of these men, Cato, my own black servant ran up the poop-ladder and told us in much trepidation that Monsieur Housi, with the boatswain Rigault and one of the French sailors, were imprisoned in the forepeak, while the two white sailors and the steward were hard and fast in the main hold, whither they had descended to get some provisions, the mutineers slipping on the hatchway cover over them, on the `marquis, that devil, giving the signal!"
In the very first letter she had from Calcutta, Bunter told her he had had a fall down the poop-ladder, and cut his head, but no bones broken, thank God. That was all. Of course, she had other letters from him, but that vagabond Bunter never gave me a scratch of the pen the solid eleven months. I supposed, naturally, that everything was going on all right. Who could imagine what was happening?
The man, who was obviously nervous, said: "The last I saw of him was as he-fell down the port poop-ladder." "Fell down the poop-ladder! What did he do that for? What made him?" "I don't know, sir. He was walking the port side. Then just as he turned towards me to come aft..." "You saw him?" interrupted the captain. "I did. I was looking at him. And I heard the crash, too something awful.
So saying, Godby climbed to the quarter-deck and I after him, and mounting the poop-ladder, presently came on Penfeather, peering hard over our lee. "Ha, is it you, shipmate!" says he, drawing me out of the wind. "Look yonder, d'ye see aught of a rag o' sail, Martin?" Following his pointing finger, I stared away into the distance across a tumbling spume of waters vague in the half-light.
He then, accompanied by Mr Annesley, went up on the poop, and stood there, watching the eager and expectant faces of the men as they clustered thickly in the waist on both sides of the deck. The officers were all grouped together upon the quarter-deck. Waiting until all hands were present, the skipper stepped forward to the head of the poop-ladder, and, waving his hand for silence, said,
Meanwhile, though he was blissfully ignorant of the fact, sharp eyes had been watching his motions for some time; and his foot was scarcely on the top step of the poop-ladder when Jim Martin, the owner of a pair of the aforesaid sharp eyes, exclaimed "Hurrah, my bullies! Keep it up; here he comes. The shark has bolted the bait without so much as smelling at it."
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