Fitz the Filibuster Part 39

"Plaisters?"

"Ay; for sore hulls. A bit of thin board's always handy off a coast where there's rocks, and there's many a time when, if the carpenter had had plenty of sticking-plaister for a vessel's skin, a good s.h.i.+p could have been saved from going down. Nice place this. What a spot it would have been if it had been an island and the schooner had been wrecked!"

"What do you want the schooner wrecked for?" cried Poole.

"Me, sir? I don't want the schooner wrecked. I only said if it had been, and because you young gents was talking the other day about being on a desolate island to play Robinson Crusoe for a bit."

"Oh yes, I remember," said Fitz.

"So do I, sir. It set me thinking about that chap a good deal. Some men do get chances in life. Just think of him! Why, that fellow had everything a chap could wish for. Aren't talking too loud, are we, Mr Poole?"

"Oh no. No one could hear us whispering like this."

"That's right. I am glad you young gents come, for it was getting very unked and queer all alone. Quite cheers a fellow up. Set down, both on you."

"Thanks, no," said Fitz; "the ground's too wet."

"Nay, I don't mean on the ground. Feel just behind you. There aren't a arm-chair, but a big bit of timber as has been cut down.--There, that's better. May as well make one's miserable life happy, and I don't suppose we shall have anybody sneaking round now.--Ah, yes, that there Robinson Crusoe did have a fine time of it. Everything his own, including a s.h.i.+p safely docked ash.o.r.e full of stores, and nothing to do but break her up and sort the bits. And there he'd got all the timbers, keel-knees, planks, tree-nails, ropes, spars and yards, and plenty of sheet-metal, I'll be bound, for copper bottoming. Why, with plenty of time on his hands, he might have built anything, from a yawl to a schooner. But he didn't seem to me to s.h.i.+ne much in naval architecter.

Why, at first he hadn't a soul much above a raft."

"It was very useful, though," said Fitz.

"Nay; more trouble, sir, than it was worth. Better have built himself some kind of a boat at once. Look at his raft! Always a-sinking, or fouling, or shooting off its cargo, or trying to navigate itself. I don't believe in rafts. They're no use unless you want to use one to get washed ash.o.r.e. For my part--Pst!"

The boys sprang up at the man's whispered signal, Fitz the more actively from the fact that the carpenter's h.o.r.n.y hand had suddenly gripped his knee so forcibly that he had hard work to restrain a cry of pain.

"Somebody coming," whispered Poole, quite unnecessarily, for a loud rustling through the bushes was announcing the approach of the expected enemy.

"Stand by!" roared the carpenter, and his rifle flashed a line of light through the darkness as he fired in the direction of the sounds. "Now, my lads," he whispered, "double back into the s.h.i.+p."

As the words pa.s.sed his lips a voice from out of the darkness shouted in broken English, and with a very Spanish accent--

"Don't fire! Friends! Friends! Friends!"

The words checked the retreat on the hacienda, but they did not clear away the watch's doubts.

"Yes," growled the carpenter, "so you says, but it's too dark to see your faces." Then aloud, "Who are you? Give the word."

"Friends!" was shouted again.

"Well! Where's the word?--He don't say Sponson, Mr Poole," added the carpenter, in a whisper.

"Captain Reed! Captain Reed!" cried the same voice, from where all was perfectly still now, for the sounds of the advance had ceased.

"Who wants Captain Reed?" shouted Poole.

"Ah, yes, I know you," came excitedly. "Tell your father Don Ramon is here with his men."

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

STRANGE DOINGS.

All doubts as to the character of the new-comers were chased away by the coming up of the skipper to welcome the Don, who had nothing but bad news to communicate.

He had pa.s.sed the night in full retreat with the remnant of his followers before the forces of the rival President.

"Everything has gone wrong," he said. "I have lost heavily, and thought that I should never have been able to join my friends. What about the hacienda? Have you done anything for its defence?"

"The best we could," replied the skipper. "I suppose you know that the enemy had been here, that there had been a fight, and that they had wrecked the place."

"I? No!" cried the Don, in a voice full of despair. "I sent a party of my friends here to meet you, and this was the _rendezvous_. Don't tell me that they have been attacked and beaten."

"I have as good as told you that," said the skipper dryly.

"Ah-h-h!" panted the Don.

"We have put the place in as good a state of defence as there was time for, but we have not seen a soul."

"It is terrible," groaned the Don. "My poor friends! prisoners, or driven off! But you! You have your brave men."

"I have about half my crew here, sir," said the skipper sternly; "but we haven't come to fight, only to bring what you know."

"Ah! The guns, the ammunition, the store of rifles!" cried the Don joyously. "Magnificent! Oh, you brave Englishmen! And you have them landed safe?"

"No," replied the skipper, as the middy's ears literally tingled at all he heard. "How could I land guns up here? And what could you do with them in these pathless tracts? Where are your horses and mules, even if there were roads?"

"True, true, true!" groaned the Don. "Fortune is against me now. But,"

he added sharply, "the rifles--cartridges?"

"Ah, as many of them as you like," cried the skipper, and Fitz Burnett's sense of duty began to awaken once again as he seemed in some undefined way to be getting hopelessly mixed up with people against whom it was his duty to war.

"Excellent; and you have them in the hacienda?"

"No, no; aboard my vessel."

"But where is this vessel? You could not get her up the river?"

"No; she is lying off the mouth. I came up here in a boat to meet you and get your instructions, after, as you know, being checked at San Cristobal and Velova, where your emissaries brought your despatches."

"Brave, true fellows! But the gunboat! Were you seen?"

"Seen? Yes, and nearly taken. I only escaped by the skin of my teeth."

"You were too clever," cried the Don enthusiastically. "But you should have sunk that gunboat. It would have meant life and success to me.

Why did not you send her to the bottom?"

"Well," said the skipper quietly, "first, because I am not at war, and second, because she would have sent me to the bottom if I had tried."