When it cleared away, the devil a felucca,
boat, or any thing else, was to be seen. Capsized they could not have
been, for all three were not likely to have gone that way; and as to any
creek they could have run into, why we could see none. That they had
pulled in shore, however, was our conclusion; but here have we been, the
whole morning, firing signal guns every five minutes without success."
"Did you hear no firing after the squall?" said I.
"Why, some of my people thought they did, but it was that hollow,
tremulous, reverberating kind of sound, that it might have been thunder;
and the breeze blew too strong to have allowed us to hear musketry a
mile and a half to windward. I did think I saw some smoke rise, and blow
off now and then, but" "But me no buts, Master Richard Casket; Peter
Mangrove here, as well as myself, saw your people pursue the felucca
into the lion's den, and I fear they have been crushed in his jaws." I
briefly related what we had seen--Casket was in great distress.
"They must have been taken, Cringle. The fools! to allow themselves to
be trepanned in this way. We must stand out and speak the corvette.
All hands make sail!"
I could not help smiling at the grandeur of Dick's emphasis on the all,
when twenty hands, one--third of them boys, and the rest landsmen,
scrambled up from below, and began to pull and haul in no very
seamanlike fashion. He noticed it.
"A--h, Tom, I know what you are grinning at, but I fear it has been no
laughing matter to my poor boats crew--all my best hands gone, God help
me!"
Presently being under the Firebrand's lee quarter, we lowered down the
boat and went on board, where, for the first time, the extreme
ludicrousness of my appearance and following flashed on me.
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