Part 19 (2/2)
”Scientific devils!” bl.u.s.tered the officer. ”You can't fool us so!
You're in here on a trading-voyage. We saw a _kayak_ go off from you not an hour ago.”
Not caring to bandy words, Raed made no reply; and we knelt there, with our muskets covering them, in silence. They had stopped rowing.
and were falling behind a little; for ”The Curlew” plowed leisurely on.
”Why don't you heave to?” shouted the irate commander of the boat. ”I must look at your papers! Heave to while I come alongside!”
”You can't bring that armed boat alongside of this schooner!” replied Raed. ”No objections to your examining our papers; but we're not green enough to let you bring an armed crew aboard of us.”
”Then we shall come without _letting_! Give way there!”
But his men hesitated. The sight of our muskets, and old Trull holding a blazing splinter over the howitzer, was a little too much even for the st.u.r.dy pluck of English sailors.
”Bring that boat another length nearer,” shouted Raed, slow and distinctly, ”and we shall open fire on you!”
”The devil you will!”
”Yes, we will!”
At that we all c.o.c.ked our muskets. The sharp clicking was, no doubt, distinctly audible in the boat. The officer thundered out a torrent of oaths and abuse; to all of which Raed made no reply. They did not advance, however. We meant business; and I guess they thought so. Our stubborn silence was not misconstrued.
”How do I know that you're not a set of pirates?” roared the Englishman. ”You look like it! But wait till I get back to 'The Rosamond.' and I'll knock some of the impudence out of you, you young filibusters!” And with a parting malediction, which showed wonderful ingenuity in blasphemy, he growled out an order to back water; when the boat was turned, and headed for the s.h.i.+p.
”Give 'em three cheers!” said Kit.
Whereupon we jumped up, gave _three_ and a big groan; at which the red face in the stern turned, and stared long and evilly at us.
”No wonder he's mad!” exclaimed Raed. ”Had to row clean round this ice-field, and now has got to row back for his pains! Thought he was going to scare us just about into fits. Got rather disagreeably disappointed.”
”He was pretty well _set up_, I take it,” remarked the captain. ”Had probably taken a drop before coming off. His men knew it. When he gave the order to 'give way,' they hung back: didn't care about it.”
”They knew better,” said Donovan. ”We could have knocked every one of them on the head before they could have got up the side. It ain't as if 'The Curlew' was loaded down, and lay low in the water. It's about as much as a man can do to get from a boat up over the bulwarks. They might have hit some of us with their carbines; but they couldn't have boarded us, and they knew it.”
”You noticed what he said about knocking the impudence out of us?”
said Wade. ”That means that we shall hear a noise and have cannon-shot whistling about our ears, I suppose.”
”Shouldn't wonder,” said Kit.
”Have to work to hurt us much, I reckon,” remarked the captain. ”The distance across the ice-island here can't be much under two miles and a half.”
”Still, if they've got a rifled Whitworth or an Armstrong, they may send some shots pretty near us,” said Wade.
”The English used to kindly send you Southern fellows a few Armstrongs occasionally, I have heard,” said Raed.
”Yes, they did,--just by way of testing Lincoln's blockade. Very good guns they were too. We ought to have had more of them. I tell you, if they have a good twenty-four-pound Armstrong rifle, and a gunner that knows anything, they may give us a job of carpenterwork--to stop the holes.”
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