"'Yes, yes!' said I, 'there must be some bad scheme at the bottom; but by morning we'll have a slap at them, for certain. For my part I feel----' 'Why,' said Miss Hyde, turning anxiously to me, 'almost everybody in the ship has gone _already_. Whenever the truth was discovered, there was such a confusion amongst the gentlemen and the officers that they could not think of anything else; and, as soon as the sun had set, they all crowded into the boats and went away together, to surprise the pirates in the dark.' 'Good God!' exclaimed I, in sheer amazement, and making toward the hatchway. 'Miss Hyde! _do_ you say so!--How many were there then, ma'am?' I asked. 'Oh,' said she, quickly, 'I am so glad there was such a number--five boats quite full, I believe. Not a single gentleman would stay, except little Tommy's father, who is upstairs--and papa was one of the first to get down into a boat with his rifle. But do you not think,' added she, with somewhat of a tremble in her voice, 'do you not think the people in the French ship will yield, or at least give our friends up?'
"'I hope to goodness they may!' said I, turning away from the eagerness those soft eyes of hers glittered with, as she leant out before the faint glimmer through the cuddy-door, the light of the lamp in her hand shining bright over her hair and her shoulders; while the gloomy stillness of the whole ship, below, made me think of the voice that had hailed us through the lagoon, and the same man's face--as I had no doubt now it was--when I saw it aboard the brig at sea, before the thunder-squall came on. I almost fancied I saw Finch and _him_ meeting at the present moment, with the mate's awkward look as the Frenchman's sword flashed across him--my fingers gripped together for the handle of a cutlass, to go tumbling up amongst the men over the schooner's bulwarks in the creek--when all at once another notion darted into my head, to remind me where we were in the meantime; I ran to the companion and sprang up the stair on to the quarter-deck.
"It was a hot, still night; but the change from the closeness below to the deck seemed to make quite a new man of one in an instant. I jumped on the nearest carronade-slide, and looked round to see how the land lay, which at first was difficult enough to do. They had got the Indiaman fair afloat again, I found, a little more off the shore, and farther down--the starboard gun I stood upon being, as I guessed by the shape of the trees, about opposite the mud fort, which Finch had probably been peppering at as he threatened, since the port was open, and two or three shot lying in the scuppers beside it. 'Twas somewhere nigh-hand eight o'clock of the evening, I think, and quite black on the nearest bank--you couldn't even make out the top of the woods against the sky; but another cable-length would have served to open the lower reach of the river, where it came brimming up full round the point with the night flow, sending a floating sort of a glimmer along in the dusk over against us. One could even pitch upon a line where it ran side by side with the heavy shadow that took in the ship, going across to the swampy-looking shore off our larboard side, and blackening away up-stream, while the dim bubbles and eddies swept out of the one into the other. I could just catch the low, deep roar of the sea more than a mile off, muffled by the trees and mangroves on both sides between it and us; and, the tide having come almost to a standstill, you heard the ripple against her bows get gentler and gentler, with a weak plash here and there in the dark among the grass and sedge alongshore, which seemed to wake up a chirping mutter in the bushes--and at times you'd have thought something came wading out from the edge; till in a few minutes both river and forest had sunk, as it were, into a sleep. The quieter they got, however, the more uneasy I began to feel at the state I saw things in upon deck; absolutely not a soul to be seen from wheel to bowsprit, except one man walking back and forward by himself on the forecastle, and giving a look now and then carefully enough over at the cable; Mr Brown being on the poop with his family and the knot of ladies, talking under their breath; while the old Scotch mate could be seen through the cabin skylight, leaning his bald crown over his two hands, under the lamp near the captain's cot, to listen to the missionary, as he sat gravely whispering and looking at him through his spectacles.