For a week we wandered backwards and forwards to leeward of one of the groups of islands, all of us in double watches at night, so as to keep a better look-out, but nothing happened, and after that we chose another group and waited outside while the gunboats searched it. Still nothing happened, and I don’t mind telling you that this wasn’t our idea of excitement and pirate chasing. A third week had nearly gone by when our first news of the pirates came.
Very early one morning the _Ringdove_ was sighted coming towards us very fast, and presently her Captain, Mr. Rashleigh, bounced on board. He was quite purple in the face with excitement, and looked fatter than ever. "The Skipper hasn’t turned out yet," the Commander told him, as he took him down below. "You’d better be careful. He’s a bit ’livery’ in the morning." He hadn’t been below three minutes before he bounced up on deck again, looking "down in the mouth", went back to his gunboat without saying a word to anybody, and the _Ringdove_ steamed away.
The Commander had to go to the Captain immediately, and through the open skylight I heard the Captain bellow, "that fat little blockhead has let ’em slip through his fingers. He drives the crew of a junk ashore, and never stops to see what becomes of ’em. I’ve sent him back, and we’d better follow him." Then I heard him give a terrific "Umph!"
Dicky found out all that had happened from the coxswain of the whaler which had brought Mr. Rashleigh across. He had slipped down the ladder directly, which was rather a smart thing to do. The coxswain had told him that yesterday evening, just as it was getting dark, they had sighted a junk becalmed under an island. Her crew could be seen getting out their sweeps and working at them frantically to try and escape, but Mr. Rashleigh had turned on the _Ringdove’s_ searchlight, and, so the coxswain said, thrown a drum of oil on the fires. At any rate, he jolly soon began to overhaul her rapidly, and as she came up, the junk’s crew jumped overboard and swam for the shore. Mr. Rashleigh immediately sent a cutter’s crew away to board her. Fortunately there had been some little delay in shoving off, and before they could pull halfway the junk blew up, which proves that she must have been a pirate. The cutter was so close that pieces of burning wood actually fell into the boat, and it was jolly lucky that they weren’t actually alongside.