Part 18 (2/2)
”Very well. Mr. Robson!”
”Yes, sir.”
”Twenty men wanted for the Nashville. We can spare them, and Captain Long is short-handed.”
”Now,” laughed Captain Long, ”give me a fair selection, Mr. Robson. No cripple, mind.”
”All our men are up to the mark.”
”Good! The sooner you can send them aboard the better, for I want to start.”
Lieutenant Robson lost no time. He had twenty men paraded on deck.
Amongst them happened to be Young Glory and Dan Daly.
Lieutenant Robson pa.s.sed his eye along them.
”If he doesn't like them,” he said to himself, ”he's hard to please.”
In truth he would be, for a finer body of men never stepped the deck of a s.h.i.+p.
”What's up?” whispered one of the men.
”Shure, it's some fightin' for us!”
”Hope so, Dan.”
”My men,” said Lieutenant Robson, ”the duty you are to be placed on, is not given to you because you have displeased the captain. On the contrary. But someone has to do it, and you have been chosen.”
The men's faces fell at this speech.
”Yes, you are lent to the Nashville. You will go aboard at once, and my last word is--but I know it's unnecessary--that you will show your new skipper what the men of the Brooklyn can do.”
The men were instantly dismissed. It took them a few minutes to collect their belongings, during which they received much sympathy from their comrades.
”You'll miss this fight, Young Glory.”
”Don't talk about it,” replied Young Glory, hotly. ”It's enough to send a man crazy!”
”Shure, it's like desertin', I feel!”
”Do. There's no one to stop you, Dan, and it's very easy. You have only to step over the s.h.i.+p's sides into the mouth of the shark who's waiting there for you.”
But Dan was too mad to reply.
He and his comrades very soon found themselves on the Nashville.
The first person they met aboard was Captain Long, whom they had not seen when he paid his visit to Captain Miles on the Brooklyn.
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