All the deserters spoke up except Bob. He grumbled as usual, and had some objections to offer. “Tom,” said he, “you haven’t yet answered the question I asked you once before: who’s going to navigate the vessel? You can’t do it.”
“Can’t I? What’s the reason? All we’ve got to do is to follow the coast.”
“And get lost or wrecked for our pains! No, thankee. And there’s another thing you haven’t thought of. We shall want some clearance papers, and how are we going to get ’em? That officer who boarded us as we came in will be sure to visit us again. The mate said so.”
“But suppose we can’t do it? What if he sees us and hails us?”
“We won’t stop, that’s all. He goes around in a row-boat, and the yacht will easily run away from her.”
“You forget that there are two men of war in the harbor, and a fort on the point. I don’t care to run the fire of a hundred guns in such a craft as the Banner. Put me on board the old gunboat Cairo, if she was as good as before she was sunk by that rebel torpedo in Yazoo river, and I wouldn’t mind it.”
“We’re not going to run the fire of a hundred guns, or one either,” replied Tomlinson. “I’ll tell you just how we will manage it. We’ll take the Banner at once; that’s the first thing to be done. Then we’ll run her over to the other side of the harbor—there are no wharves there, you know—and anchor off shore until dark, when we will make sail and slip out; and no one will be the wiser for it.”
“But we shall want something to eat,” persisted Bob. “There isn’t a mouthful on board the yacht. We may meet with head winds, you know, and be a week reaching Havana.”
“Haven’t I told you that it will be the easiest thing in the world to land somewhere on the coast and steal some grub?” demanded Tomlinson, losing all patience.
“So it will, mate, and I know just where to get it,” said a strange voice, in a suppressed whisper above their heads.
The deserters, not a little alarmed to find that their conversation had been overheard, glanced quickly upward and saw a man crouching at the top of the ladder and looking down at them. It was Pierre, who having thus addressed them, made a gesture of silence, and after looking all around the deck as if fearful of being seen, crept down the ladder into the forecastle.