Part 41 (1/2)
'Twas a sight to do a fellow's eyes good.
”Boys, this is hunky!”
”Well, ain't it, captain?”
”You're all there, aren't ye? Well, how do you do?” helping us over the rail. ”You don't look as if you had starved.”
”Starved?--no! Catch us starving! We've got a whole tribe to back us.
But Bonney, old boy, what's the matter with your arm?” exclaimed Kit.
”Oh! nothing very bad,” replied Bonney, laughing and looking to the captain.
”Splinter hit him,” said Capt. Mazard significantly.
”You don't say!” Kit exclaimed. ”Did they come so near you as that?”
”So near's that!” bl.u.s.tered old Trull. ”Guess you'd 'a' said so! Why, look at the after-bulwarks! and look at the windla.s.s!”
The taffrail was gone, sure enough, and the stern bulwarks broken and patched up down to the deck. The windla.s.s was torn up too.
”Whew!” from all of us.
”Only one shot hit us,” explained the captain. ”Glanced up from the water through the stern, knocked up the taffrail, and then went forward: just missed the mast, but hit the windla.s.s. Haven't been able to anchor since.”
”Well, I'll be blamed!” exclaimed Wade. ”Hurt you much, Bonney?”
”Broke his arm!” said the captain.
”You don't say so!”
”Yes, sir. But we've set it; and it's doing well, I think.”
”Well, you must have been short-handed here!” cried Donovan.
”Bet you, we have been! Had to have Palmleaf on deck half the time.
We've made quite a sailor of him.”
We all praised the darky. Even Wade cried, ”Well done, old s...o...b..ll!
How's that under your wool?”
”I tinks,” said the negro, grinning all over, ”dat dis am a bery j'yful 'casion!”
”So 'tis!”
”But how far did they chase you?” Raed inquired.
”Clean out into the Atlantic,” replied Capt. Mazard. ”I should have given them a circular race about that ice-island where we were when 'The Rosamond' fired into us; but the tide has broken up the ice there now. We've come back just as quick as we could. But how have you fared? Why, I've had dismal fears of finding only one or two of you alive, devouring the bodies of the rest.”
We thereupon gave the captain a brief account of our sojourn on the island, and how we had managed the Huskies.
”That only demonstrates that you are natural-born sovereign Yankees,”