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Updated: June 25, 2025
I think I can overhaul her in less than half-an-hour, and then I shall heave to, and wait for you to come aboard." The second lieutenant saluted, and the captain went forward to watch the schooner. "Are you coming with me this time, Vandean?" said the lieutenant. "Yes, I hope so, sir," said the lad. "Hope, eh? Humph. You don't know what you are talking about, my lad."
"Don't you be uneasy about that, Mr Vandean, sir," said the stroke oarsman; "me and my mates'll smuggle the young nigger gent aboard somehow, even if I has to lend him my duds." "You leave off cutting jokes, Tom Fillot, and pull hard." "Ay, ay, sir," cried the man, chuckling, and he and his fellows made the boat skim through the glowing water.
Now if it had been my case I should have said: `Mark Vandean, my most attached friend, I regret extremely that in your anxiety to gain tidings of me and my boat, you should have brought the cloth of your sit-downs into contact with the inspissated juice of the Norwegian fir, to their destruction and conversion into sticking-plaister.
"Come along here, Mr Vandean," cried the lieutenant from the bow end of the boat; and Mark shudderingly left the coxswain making fast the wrist of the dead black to one of the rudder-lines, and joined his brother officer, easily passing from one to the other of the men as they half lay on the bottom, resting and clinging by one hand to the keel. "Cheer up, my lad!" said the lieutenant.
Nothing of a climb up over the stern of that schooner, a trifle compared to the same task on the Nautilus; but it was hard work to Mark Vandean, who had to move by inches, getting well hold and drawing himself up till he was about to reach his hand over the top, when he felt one foot gliding from its support, and thought that he was gone.
Hah, here comes Mr Whitney! Poor Russell! has he been long like this?" "Yes, sir; all the time since the Yankees came off in their boat and surprised us." "Then you you Why, Mr Vandean, you don't mean to say you've been in command all the time?" "Yes, sir," said Mark, modestly. "Fillot has been my first lieutenant." "Humph! the forecastle joker, eh?" said Mr Staples, grimly.
It is to be hoped not, and that you never will be in such jeopardy as that in which Mark Vandean found himself as the pale, soft moonlight was suddenly shut out from sight, and he went down into the black darkness, too much startled and confused to grasp his position and make a calm, matter-of-fact attempt to save his life.
Mark Vandean, who leaned back and had wrenched himself round to sharply adjure something behind him in the bottom of the boat, was burned of a good warm Russian leather brown, while his companion, Bob Howlett, who held the rudder-lines, displayed in addition to ruddy brown cheeks a nose in a most disreputable state of rag.
"Here, stand aside!" cried the lieutenant, as he stepped down into the noisome hold, followed by Tom Fillot and a couple of the crew, each man with sword or cutlass in hand. "Now, Mr Vandean, quick; an attack?" "Yes, sir; the slaves attacked our two men. One of them's badly wounded."
You see, them being black, they fits in with the darkness, and as they never laughs you don't see their teeth. I'd go if I was you." Bob hesitated. It would never do for him to show the white feather before the man, and if he did not go Mark Vandean was taking all the credit. Tom Fillot was right, it would be something to talk about, and after another moment's hesitation, he turned to the sailor.
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