The Black Bar | Page 8

chap, and then perhaps I shall look as cocky as you do. Oh, what a wonderful chap you are, Van!"
Mark made a quick gesture, as if to hit out at his messmate, and then looked on in wonder as the captain ordered the cutter's crew back into the boat, and the men to the falls, ready in case the slaver captain should repeat his manoeuvre, while the guns were double-shotted and laid for the moment when the schooner would be once more within range.
"I say," whispered Bob, "don't the skipper look savage? I believe he'd send a broadside into the schooner if it wasn't for the slaves on board."
"Of course he would; he said so," replied Mark, and he went forward and then down below to where, by the dim light of a swinging lantern, he could see the wild eyes of the black as he lay in a bunk, ready to start up in dread as the lad approached.
"All right; be still," said the midshipman, laying his hand upon the man's shoulder, and pressing him back; "how are you?"
The man glared at him in silence, but made no sound.
"It's of no use to talk to you, I s'pose," continued Mark. "There, go to sleep. Perhaps we shall have some companions for you in the morning. Hullo! begun again!"
For at that moment there was a dull roar and the jarring sensation of a gun being fired overhead, making the black start and look wonderingly about him.
"I say, that startled him," said Bob Howlett, who had stolen down behind his messmate, and had stood in the semi-darkness laughing at the black's astonishment. "What do you think of that, old chap? That's some of our private thunder. Large supply kept on the premises. There goes another! Here, Van, we mustn't stop below."
For a second report shook the deck, and the black tried to rise, but sank back from sheer weakness.
"Tell him it's all right, Van, and that he'd better go to sleep."
"How?" replied Mark.
"Ah, 'tis how! I say, what a shame for us to be sent on the west coast in such a state of ignorance. Here, all right, Massa Sambo. Go to sleep. I say, do come on, Van, or there'll be a row."
The next minute the two lads were on deck, to find that they were rapidly overhauling the schooner, and they were just in time to hear the orders given as the boat was ready to be lowered.
"Come, Mr Howlett, where have you been?"
This from the first lieutenant.
Bob murmured some excuse, and sprang into the boat, which dropped out of sight directly, and then darted in again as the men bent to their stout ashen oars, and sent her rapidly in the schooner's wake, where Mark made out by the troubled water seen through his glass that another poor fellow had been tossed overboard by the slaver captain, for he rightly judged that no English officer would leave the black to drown.
He was quite correct in his judgment, for though Captain Maitland had fumed and declared that he would not give up the chance of capture for the sake of a black, when he felt that he might seize the schooner and put an end to the mischief she was doing probably year after year, he had his vessel's course stayed, and waited patiently for the return of the boat he had lowered.
The mission of this cutter was almost an exact repetition of the one in which Mark took part, Bob Howlett having the luck to seize the second drowning man, over whose body the boathook had slipped.
"And no wonder," growled the coxswain afterwards. "He'd got on no duds, and I didn't want to stick the hook into his flesh."
While this was going on, the captain stamped above on one side of the quarter-deck, the first lieutenant on the other. For they kept as far apart as they could, and it was an understood thing amongst the junior officers that it would be to come in for the full force of an explosion to speak to either of them now.
"Pull, men, pull!" roared the first lieutenant through his speaking trumpet. "Mr Russell, do you want to keep us here all night?"
"Ay, ay, sir," came back from the boat.
"What?"
"No, no, sir; I beg your pardon. We've got the man."
"Got the man!" cried the captain, angrily; "do you think we have no glasses on board? Make haste, sir."
"Oh!"
"What's that?" cried the captain, sharply, for there had been the sound of a sharp crack, and Mark had uttered the cry.
"What's that, sir?" cried the lieutenant in a rage; "why it's Mr Vandean, sir, getting under my feet like a spaniel dog, and the moment I move he yelps out, sir."
"It wasn't your foot, sir," cried Mark sharply, for his head was stinging