"So now come on board the
long-boat at once. I dare not tow in her wake much longer, to be sucked
in when she goes down."
"Come on board your craft and desert my own?" said Hudson, disdainfully.
"Know my duty to m' employers better."
These words alarmed the mate. "Curse it all!" he cried; "the fool has
been and got some more rum. Fifty guineas to the man that will shin up
the tow-rope and throw that madman into the sea; then we can pick him up.
He swims like a cork."
A sailor instantly darted forward to the rope. But, unfortunately, Hudson
heard this proposal, and it enraged him. He got to his cutlass. The
sailor drew the boat under the ship's stern, but the drunken skipper
flourished his cutlass furiously over his head. "Board me! ye pirates!
the first that lays a finger on my bulwarks, off goes his hand at the
wrist." Suiting the action to the word, he hacked at the tow-rope so
vigorously that it gave way, and the boats fell astern.
Helen Rolleston uttered a shriek of dismay and pity. "Oh, save him!" she
cried.
"Make sail!" cried Cooper; and, in a few seconds, they got all her canvas
set upon the cutter.
It seemed a hopeless chase for these shells to sail after that dying
monster with her cloud of canvas all drawing, alow and aloft.
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