Part 18 (2/2)

Another jet of white smoke puffed out from the side of the s.h.i.+p, followed in a few seconds by another dull _bang_.

”We'll stand by our colors in any case,” remarked Capt. Mazard, attaching our flag to the signal halliards.

Raed and Kit ran to hoist it. Up it went to the peak of the bright-yellow mast,--the bonny bright stars and stripes.

”All hands weigh anchor!” ordered Capt. Mazard.

”Load the howitzer!” cried Kit. ”Let's answer their gun in coin!”

While we were loading, the schooner was brought round.

Wade must have got in a pretty heavy charge; for the report was a stunner.

”Load again,” said Kit; ”and put in a ball this time. Let's load the rifle too.”

The captain turned and regarded us doubtfully, then looked off toward the s.h.i.+p. ”The Curlew” was driving lazily forward, and, crossing the channel between the island under which we had been lying and the ice-field, pa.s.sed slowly along the latter at a distance of a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards. We thus had the ice-island between us and the possibly hostile s.h.i.+p. With our gla.s.ses we now watched her movements attentively. A number of officers were on the quarter-deck.

”You don't call that a s.h.i.+p-of-war?” Wade said at length.

”Oh, no!” replied the captain; ”though it is probably an armed s.h.i.+p.

All the company's s.h.i.+ps go armed, I've heard.”

”There!” exclaimed Kit. ”They're letting down a boat!”

”That's so!” cried Wade. ”They're going to pay us a visit sure!”

”They probably don't want to trust their heavy-laden s.h.i.+p up here among the islands,” said the captain.

”It's their long-boat, I think,” said Kit. ”One, two, three, four, five!--why, there are not less than fifteen or twenty men in it! And _see there!_--weapons!”

As the boat pulled away from the side, the sun flashed brightly from a dozen gleaming blades.

”Cutla.s.ses!” exclaimed Raed, turning a little pale.

I am ready to confess, that, for a moment, I felt as weak as a rag.

The vengeful gleam of the light on hostile steel is apt, I think, to give one such a feeling the first time he sees it. The captain stood leaning on the rail, with the gla.s.s to his eye, evidently at his wits'

end, and in no little trepidation. Very likely at that moment he wished our expedition had gone to Jericho before he had undertaken it.

Raed, I think, was the first to rally his courage. I presume he had thought more on the subject previously than the rest of us had done.

The sudden appearance of the s.h.i.+p had therefore taken him less by surprise than it did us.

”It looks as if they were going to board us--if we let them,” he said quietly. ”That's the way it looks; isn't it, captain?”

”I should say that it did, decidedly,” Capt. Mazard replied.

”Boys!” exclaimed Raed, looking round to us, and to the sailors, who had gathered about us in some anxiety,--”boys! if we let those fellows yonder board us, in an hour we shall all be close prisoners, in irons perhaps, and down in the hold of that s.h.i.+p. We shall be carried out to Fort York, kept there a month in a dungeon likely as any way, then sent to England to be tried--for daring to sail into Hudson Bay and trade with the Esquimaux! What say, boys?--shall we let them come aboard and take us?”

”No, sir!” cried Kit.

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