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I was standing aft, close to the taffrail, on the port side, at the moment, and one of the shot came crashing in at the stern-port nearest me, striking the stanchion heavily, and making the splinters fly in all directions, one of them striking me on the left temple, ripping up the skin and baring my poor unfortunate skull for a length of some four inches.
He opened, as he spoke, a hatch which led to the magazine, and I saw him uncoiling a long line of match, one end of which he placed in the magazine, while he led the other along the cabin to the stern-port.
But Lucy would not be defeated; she made Jack gather it up in the middle, and roll it first to the right, then to the left, till it became a solid roll with two narrow open edges. They then carried it abaft, and lowered it vertically over the stern-port; then suddenly turned it round, and sat down. "Crack!" the wind opened it, and wrapped it round the boat and the trio.
Mulford," Josh at length cried, from the look-out he had taken in a stern-port, where he could see over the low bulwarks of the vessel. "Yes, dat's dem, sir. I know dat old gray horse dat carries his head so low and sorrowful like, as a horse has a right to do dat has to drag a cab about this big town. My eye! what a horse it is, sir!"
"We got good lays, us before the mast, but there never was a fair sharin' aboard that ship. One night I crawled aft an' looked in the stern-port. 'Twas just after we'd got our lays for kidnappin' the Governor o' Santiago a rich town as you know. In the cabin sat ol' Brig, a bare cutlass acrost his lap, countin' piles o' moidores that filled the whole table.
The savages think they have us in a trap, but they are mistaken." He opened, as he spoke, a hatch which led to the magazine, and I saw him uncoiling a long line of match, one end of which he placed in the magazine, while he led the other along the cabin to the stern-port.
And the head popped back again; and we heard no more, for the time, of these six very faint-hearted seamen. By this time, tumbling things in as they came, we had the jolly-boat loaded as much as we dared. Joyce and I got out through the stern-port, and we made for shore again as fast as oars could take us. This second trip fairly aroused the watchers along shore.
Soon after our arrival at Batavia we proceeded to refit our ships, beginning with the Marquis; but on coming down to her bends, we found both these and the stern and stern-port so rotten and worm-eaten, that on a survey of carpenters she was found incapable of being rendered fit for proceeding round the Cape of Good Hope, on which we had to hire a vessel to take in her loading.
Their poor messmates can have little respect for these pretending Rembrandts and Paganinis; and the happiness of the mess would be considerably improved if authority were given to pitch every such sketch-book and every flute out at the stern-port.
I had now forgotten my fears. I was keenly impatient for the word to attack. A shrill wailing cry suddenly burst on the night air. The man in front of me, holding his spear above his head with one hand, made a prodigious leap from the boat, caught the planking with his fingers, got toe-hold on a stern-port, and went up over the rail like a wild beast.
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