Part 32 (2/2)
answered the Maltese carelessly. ”I wish he were; for he must have been out in that storm yesterday, in one of your little feluccas, and Heaven knows what may have become of him.”
”Where has he gone, then?” asked the pirate. ”It would have been wiser to have trusted himself in your fine brig here, than in one of our native boats, which our seamen only know how to handle.”
”Oh! don't ask me, my friend; we seamen have no business to talk of our captain's doings,” replied the Maltese, laughing. ”But let me know where you have learned to speak the _lingua Franca_ so well. It is not often that I can understand ten words uttered by the fishermen of these parts.”
”I will reply to your question, friend, though you do not answer mine,”
returned Zappa. ”I sailed as a boy to all parts of the coast of the Mediterranean, till my father died, and I came home and married. I have now a mother and sisters, besides a wife and family to support; so I can go roving no longer. And so your captain has gone on an expedition, has he? Have many people accompanied him, for I suppose he did not go alone?”
”As many went as he chose to take with him,” replied the Maltese. ”If he had ordered them, the whole s.h.i.+p's company would have gone.”
”A clear answer, friend. Does anybody else wish to buy more of my fish.
Just ask them; for I must be off again to catch a fresh supply for the support of my young family,” said the pirate carelessly. ”And can you not tell me then where your captain has gone to?”
”I shall begin to think you have some reason for your curiosity, if you ask so many questions,” observed the shrewd Maltese. ”I was joking about our captain, and, if you want to see him, I can take you to him.”
”Is it so?” answered Zappa, who easily divined the reason of the man's answer, and was far too keen to be deceived by it, or to want a reply.
”I care nothing about your captain, further than that I thought I might sell him some fish if I met him. But you can do me a service, by telling me if I am likely to fall in with any other s.h.i.+ps of war, or merchantmen, with whom I may drive my trade?”
”Ah, padrone, I cannot a.s.sist you there either; for we seamen know little of what happens outside the s.h.i.+p's planks,” returned the Maltese.
”It is not often, though, one goes long in these seas without meeting with a cruiser of our own country, and as for merchantmen they are thick enough; but neither one nor the other are likely to come to such out-of-the-way islands as these are.”
”When will that man have finished selling his fish there?” sang out the officer of the watch. ”Manuel, there--Tell him, as soon as he's done, to shove off. We ought not to hold any communication with the natives,”
he muttered to himself, as he continued his quarter-deck walk. ”These fellows are as sharp as knives, and, if we let them near us, they'll be ferreting out something they ought not to know to a certainty.”
”Ay, ay, sir,” replied Manuel. ”Come, Mister Fisherman, the officer says you must not be standing talking here all day, so I'll wish you farewell, and a good haul the next time you let down your nets.”
”Thanks, friend, I am generally tolerably successful in that way,”
answered the pretended fisherman. ”Farewell, I shall come alongside again to-morrow, and I hope to find plenty of buyers. I live a little way down the coast, and shall sure to be back, so do not buy of any one else. Caralambro Boboti is my name. Don't forget it. Farewell, again--”
Just as he was uttering these words, and making the usual salaam to the p.o.o.p, or rather to the officers walking on it, his eye lighted on the countenance of a man ascending the companion-ladder which made even him for an instant turn pale. At first the idea glanced across his mind that he saw an apparition, but the shoulders and the body and legs came next, and he was soon convinced that the person before him was real flesh and blood. No less a person, indeed, than Colonel Gauntlett ascended from below closely followed by his man Mitch.e.l.l, and stood on the deck of the _Ione_, glaring at him with a look which convinced him that he was recognised through his disguise. There was not a moment to be lost. If he remained where he stood, the probability was that he would be seized; if he exhibited any fear or hurry, it would be equivalent to condemning himself, and he and his companions would be shot without mercy, as they attempted to escape. He felt at once that his only chance depended on his own coolness so as to make the old officer fancy that he was mistaken in his ident.i.ty. With the most perfect self-possession, therefore, he repeated his farewell to the Maltese, and was about deliberately to lower himself into his boat, when the colonel threw the whole s.h.i.+p into commotion, by exclaiming in a voice of thunder--
”That's him!--The scoundrel--the pirate--stop him--fire at him. I'm right, Mitch.e.l.l, am I not? That's the villain who attacked the _Zodiac_, and carried off my poor niece?”
”Not a doubt of it your honour. It's the thief of the world who murdered us all, and by the holy poker I'll have him.”
As he uttered these words he sprang towards the gangway, nearly capsizing his master, and almost grasped Zappa by the croup of the neck before anybody else understood what the commotion was all about. He missed him, however, and the pirate, with a spring, which the imminence of his danger would alone have enabled him to take, leaped into his boat, and as he did so, he exclaimed to his crew, who saw that something was wrong--
”Shove off, or we are dead men!”
The pirates waited no further words to excite them to exertion, and a few strokes sent the boat clear off the brig's side.
So great, mean time, was the impetus Mitch.e.l.l had gained, that when he missed catching Zappa, he could not again bring himself up, and souse overboard in the water he went, his head fortunately escaping the gunnel of the pirate's boat by a few inches. In revenge, an old pirate attempted to give him his _coup de grace_ with the blade of his oar, but missed him.
”Arrah, ye cowardly thief to hit a man like that in the water, but I'll mark ye--remember--bad luck to ye,” exclaimed Mitch.e.l.l, as after his first immersion he rose to the surface, where his spluttering and cries drew the attention of the sentry off from the pirates.
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