"Say, lads, I'm getting tired of this here," said Tom Tully, bringing
himself to an anchor on a patch of sand; "I'm as hot as I am dry.
Where's our orsifer?"
"I d'no," said another. "Ahoy! Billy Waters, ahoy-y-y!"
"Ahoy!" came from amongst the rocks; and the gunner plodded up wiping
his face, and another of the little party came at the same time from the
other direction.
"Where's Muster Leigh?" said Tom Tully.
"Isn't he along of you?" said Waters.
"No, I ar'n't seen him for ever so long."
Notes were compared, as the hailing brought the rest of the party
together, and it was agreed on all sides that Hilary had gone in amongst
the rocks close by where they were standing.
"I know how it is," growled Tom Tully, "he's having a caulk under the
lee of one of these here stones while we do all the hunting about; and I
can't walk half so well as I used, after being shut up aboard that there
little cutter."
"Oh, no, he wouldn't go to sleep," said the gunner. "He's close here
somewhere. I hope he's had better luck than we, for I ar'n't found
nothing; have you?"
"No, no," arose on all sides.
"Why, there ain't nothin' to find," growled Tom Tully. "I wish I was
aboard. You're chief orsifer when he ar'n't here, Billy Waters. Give
the order and let's go back."
"What, without Mr Leigh?" said the gunner; "that's a likely tale, that
is. Here, come on lads, and let's find him. Ahoy!"
"Ahoy!" came back from the rocks.
"There he is," said one of the men.
"No, my lads, that's only the ecker," said Billy Waters. "Hark ye--
Ahoy!"
"Ahoy!" came back directly.
"Hoy--hoy--hoy-y-y!" shouted the gunner again.
"Hoy--hoy-y-y!" came back.
"Mis' Leigh, ahoy!" roared the gunner.
"Leigh--hoy!" was the response.
"Told you so, my lads; he ar'n't about here. Let's go further on. Now
then, Tom Tully, we must have off some o' that there tail if it's so
heavy it keeps you anchored down. Get up, will you?"
The sailor got up unwillingly, and in obedience to the gunner's orders
they began now, in place of searching for traces of the smugglers, to
look for their missing officer, scattering along, as fate had it,
farther and farther from the spot where he had disappeared, no one
seeing a face watching them intently through the thin wiry strands of a
tuft of grass growing close up under the cliff.
The heat was now intense, for the sun seemed to be reflected back from
the face of the rocks, and the men were regularly fagged.
They shouted and waited, and shouted again, but the only answer they got
was from the echoes; and at last they stood together in a knot, with
Billy Waters scratching his head with all his might, and they were a
good half mile now from where Hilary had made his discovery and stepped
into a trap.
"Well, this here _is_ a rummy go," exclaimed the gunner, after looking
from face to face for the counsel that there was not. "Let's see, my
lads; it was just about here as he went forrard, warn't it?"
"No," growled Tom Tully; "it were a good two-score fathom more to the
east'ard."
"Nay, nay, lad; it were a couple o' cables' length doo west," said
another.
"I think it were 'bout here," said Tom Tully; "but I can't find that
there track o' the boat's keel now. What's going to be done?"
"Let's go aboard again," growled Tom Tully. "I'm 'bout sick o' this
here, mates."
"But I tell yer we can't go aboard without our orsifer," cried the
gunner. "'Taint likely."
"He'd go aboard without one of us," growled Tom Tully, "so where's the
difference?"
"There's lots o' difference, my lad. We can't go aboard without him.
But where is he?"
"Having a caulk somewhere," said Tully gruffly; "and I on'y wish I were
doing of that same myself. If we stop here much longer we shall be
cooked like herrings. It's as hot as hot."
"I tell you he wouldn't desert us and go to sleep," said the gunner
stubbornly. "Mr Leigh's a lad as would stick to his men like pitch to
a ball o' oakum."
"Then why don't he?" growled Tom Tully in an ill-used tone. "What does
he go and sail away from conwoy for?"
"He couldn't have got up the cliffs," mused the gunner; "'cause there
don't seem to be no way, and he couldn't have gone more to west'ard,
'cause we must have seen him. There ain't been no boats along shore,
and he can't have gone back to the cutter. I say, my lads, we've been
and gone and got ourselves into a reg'lar mess. What's the skipper
going to say when he sees us? You see we can't tell him as the
youngster's fell overboard."
"No," growled Tom Tully; "'cause there ar'n't no overboard for him to
fall. I'm right, I know; he's having a caulk."
"Tell yer he ain't," roared Waters fiercely; "and if any one says again
as my young orsifer's doing such a thing as to leave his men in the
lurch and go to sleep on a hot day like this, he'll get my fist in his
mouth."
"Sail ho!" cried one of the men; and looking in the indicated direction,
there was the cutter afloat once more, and sailing towards them, quite a
couple of miles away, and as they looked there was a little puff of
white smoke from her side, and a few seconds after a dull report.
"Look at that now;" cried Billy Waters, "there's the skipper got some
one meddling with my guns. That's that Jack Brown, that is; and he
knows no more about firing a gun than he do 'bout Dutch. There was a
dirty sort of a shot."
"That's a signal, that is, for us to come aboard," growled Tom Tully.
"Well, nobody said it warn't, did they?" cried Waters, who was regularly
out of temper now.
"No," growled Tom Tully, "on'y wishes I was aboard, I do."
"Then you ain't going till you've found your orsifer, my lad."
"Hah!" said Tom Tully, oracularly. "Shouldn't wonder if he ar'n't
desarted 'cause the skipper give him such a setting down this morning."
"Now just hark at this here chap," cried the gunner, appealing to the
others. "He'd just go and do such a dirty thing hisself, and so he
thinks every one else would do the same. Tom Tully, I'm 'bout ashamed
o' you. I shouldn't ha' thought as a fellow with such a pigtail as
you've got to your headpiece would say such a thing of his orsifer."
"Then what call's he got to go and desart us for like this here,
messmet?" growled Tom Tully. "I don't want to say no hard things o'
nobody, but here's the skin off one o' my heels, and my tongue's baked;
and what I says is, where is he if he ar'n't gone?"
That was a poser; and as after another short search there was a second
gun fired from the cutter, and a boat was seen to put off and come
towards them, there was nothing for them but to go down to the water and
get into the boat, after Billy Waters had taken bearings, as he called
it, of the place where the young officer had left them, setting up
stones for marks,--which, however, through the deceptive nature and
similarity of the coast in one part to another, were above half a mile
from the true spot,--and suffer themselves to be rowed aboard.
"The skipper's in a fine temper," said one of the crew. "Where's Muster
Leigh?"
"Ah! that's just what I want to know," said Waters, ruefully. "He'll be
down upon me for losing on him--just as if I took him ashore like a dog
tied to a string. How did you get the cutter off?"
"Easy as a glove," was the reply. "We just took out the little anchor
and dropped it over, and when the tide come up hauled on it a bit, and
she rode out as easy as a duck. But he's been going on savage because
Muster Leigh didn't come back. Has he desarted?"
The gunner turned upon him so fierce a look, and made so menacing a
movement, that the man shrank away, and catching what is called a crab
upset the rower behind him, the crew for the moment being thrown into
confusion, just as the lieutenant had raised his spyglass to his eye and
was watching the coming off of the boat.
"What call had you got to do that, Billy?" cried the man, rubbing his
elbows. "There'll be a row about that. Here, give way, my lads, and
let's get aboard."
The men made the stout ashen blades bend as they forced the boat through
the water, and at the end of a few minutes the oars were turned up, laid
neatly over the thwarts, and the bowman held on with the boathook while
the search party tumbled on board, the sides of the cutter being at no
great height above the water.
The lieutenant was there, with his glass under his arm, his head tied up
so that one eye was covered, and his cocked hat was rightly named in a
double sense, being cocked almost off his head.
"Disgraceful, Mr Leigh!" he exclaimed furiously. "You deserve to be
court-martialled, sir! Never saw a boat worse manned and rowed, sir. I
never saw from the most beggarly crew of a wretched merchantman worse
time kept. Why, the men were catching crabs, sir, from the moment they
left the shore till the moment they came alongside. Bless my
commission, sir! were you all drunk?"
He had one eye shut by the old accident, as we have intimated, and the
injury of the previous night had so affected the other that he saw
anything but clearly, as he kept stamping up and down the deck.
"Do you hear, sir? I say were you all drunk?" roared the lieutenant.
"Please your honour," said the gunner, "we never see a drop of anything
except seawater since we went ashore."
"Silence, sir! How dare you speak?" roared the lieutenant.
"Insubordination and mutiny. Did I speak to you, sir? I say, did I
speak to you?"
"No, your honour, but--"
"If you say another word I'll clap you in irons, you dog!" cried the
lieutenant. "A pretty state of affairs, indeed, when men are to answer
their officers. Do you hear, there, you mutinous dogs! If another man
among you dares to speak I'll clap him in irons."
The men exchanged glances, and there was a general hitching up of
trousers along the little line in which the men were drawn up.
"Now then, sir. Have the goodness to explain why you have been so long,
and why all my signals for recall have been disregarded. Silence, sir!
don't speak till I've done," he continued, as one of the men, who had
let a little tobacco juice get too near the swallowing point, gave a
sort of snorting cough.
There was dead silence on board, save a slight creaking noise made by
the crutch of the big boom as it swung gently and rubbed the mast.
"I call upon you, Mr Leigh, sir, for an explanation," continued the
lieutenant. "Silence, sir! Not yet. I sent you ashore to make a
search, expecting that your good sense would lead you to make it brief,
and to get back in time to assist in hauling off the cutter which you
had run ashore. Instead of doing this, sir, you race off with the men
like a pack of schoolboys, sir, larking about among the rocks, and
utterly refusing to notice my signals, sir, though they have been
flying, sir, for hours; and here have I been obliged to waste his
majesty's powder, sir, and foul his majesty's guns, sir."
Here, as the lieutenant's back was turned, Billy Waters shook his great
fist at Jack Brown, the boatswain, going through sundry pantomimic
motions to show how he, Billy Waters, would like to punch Jack Brown,
the boatswain's head. To which, waiting until the lieutenant had turned
and had his back to him, Jack Brown responded by taking his leg in his
two hands just above the knee and shaking it in a very decisive manner
at the gunner.
"And what is more, sir," continued the lieutenant, "you had my gunner
with you."
Billy Waters, who had drawn back his fist level with his armpit in the
act of striking an imaginary blow at the boatswain, stopped short as he
heard himself mentioned, and the lieutenant continued his trot up and
down like an angry wild beast in a narrow cage and went on:
"And, sir, I had to intrust the firing of that gun to a bungling,
thick-headed, stupid idiot of a fellow, who don't know muzzle from vent;
and the wonder is that he didn't blow one of his majesty's liege
subjects into smithereens."
The lieutenant's back was now turned to Billy Waters, who as he saw Jack
Brown's jaw drop placed his hands to his sides, and lifting up first one
leg and then the other, as if in an agony of spasmodic delight, bent
over first to starboard and then to larboard, and laughed silently till
the tears ran down his cheeks.
"I say, sir--I say," continued the lieutenant, pushing up his bandage a
little, "that such conduct is disgraceful, sir; and what is more, I
say--"
The lieutenant did not finish the sentence then, for in him angry
excitement he had continued his blind walk, extending it more and more
till he had approached close to where the carpenter had sawn out several
of the ragged planks torn by the previous night's explosion, and as he
lifted his leg for another step it was right over the yawning opening
into the men's quarters in the forecastle below.