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"No, no!" he said, as Septimus Marvin made room for him on the after-thwart. "I'm too heavy for a passenger. Put my weight on an oar," and he clambered forward to a vacant thwart. "Mind you come back for us, River Andrew!" cried little Sep's thin voice, as the boat swirled down stream.
The captain was steering; Chard sat on the after-thwart, facing him. "I tell you that I don't care much what we do, Louis," said the supercargo, with a reckless laugh, as he looked into the captain's sullen face. "We've made a damned mess of it, and I don't see how we are to get out of it by going to Ponapé."
Then, each still grasping the gunwale with one hand, they worked the boat out yard by yard, swaying her fore and aft whenever a lull in the seas came, and jerking the water out of her by degrees till the two Savage Islanders were able to clamber in and bale out with the wooden bucket slung under the after-thwart, while the white man kept her head to the sea.
On the after-thwart, and facing the Jack in office, were placed two constables, built upon the regular Devonshire, chaw-bacon model, holding, upright between their legs, each an immense staff; headed by the gilded initials of our sovereign lord the king.
Bob opened his eyes almost as soon as he tasted the brandy. "Where am I?" he stammered out, gazing round the little fo'c's'le of the lugger in wonder. "Where am I?" "Ah, le petit bon homme vit encore!" cried Antoine, hearing the voice and bending over from his seat on the after-thwart, being anxious as to the condition of the patients to whom Jacques was ministering.
The water was smooth enough under the lee of "The Last Hope," which, being deeply laden, lay motionless at her anchor, with the stream rustling past her cables. "Stand up, mademoiselle," said Barebone, himself balanced on the after-thwart. "Hold on to me, thus, and when I let you go, let yourself go." There was no time to protest or to ask questions.
While Lieutenant Prince Victor of Hohenlohe was engaged in attending to a wounded man, a shot whizzed between him and the commodore, and had he not been bending down, he would have been killed. So full of water was the boat that Keppel had to jump on the after-thwart to keep his legs out of it, when another round-shot passed through both sides of the boat scarcely an inch below him.
Gradually, however, the after-thwart became clear. "Hooray!" exclaimed Bob. "We're gaining on it."
Francisco shoved off his boat, and seizing his sculls, pushed astern, picked up the book, which still floated, and laid it to dry on the after-thwart of the boat. He then pulled in for the shore. In the meantime the schooner had let draw her foresheet, and had already left him a quarter of a mile astern. Before Francisco had gained the sand-bank she was hull-down to the northward.
This prevented him from diving, and the next instant he was, in spite of his struggles, hauled into the boat, and he found himself lashed with his hands behind him to the after-thwart. There was another prisoner to be accounted for. Terence told his crew not to make a noise as they went in chase. The man was the strongest of the three prisoners.
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