Page:Ballantyne--The Coral Island.djvu/270

 pressed anger. "Do you call a good cargo all for nothing no pay?"

"Very true," returned the mate; "but we've got the cargo aboard. Why not cut your cable and take French leave o' them? What's the use o' tryin' to lick the blackguards when it'll do us no manner o' good?"

"Mate," said the captain, in a low voice, "you talk like a freshwater sailor. I can only attribute this shyness to some strange delusion; for surely," (his voice assumed a slightly sneering tone as he said this,) "surely I am not to suppose that you have become soft-hearted! Besides, you are wrong in regard to the cargo being aboard; there's a good quarter of it lying in the woods, and that blackguard chief Knows it and wont let me take it off He defied us to do our worst, yesterday."

"Defied us! did he?" cried the mate, with a bitter laugh. "Poor contemptible thing!"

"And yet he seems not so contemptible but that you are afraid to attack him."

"Who said I was afraid?" growled the mate, sulkily. "I'm as ready as any man in the ship. But, captain, what is it that you intend to do?"

"I intend to muffle the sweeps and row the schooner up to the head of the creek there, from which pot we can command the pile of sandal-wood with our gun. Then I shall land with all the men except two, who shall take care of the schooner and be ready with the boat to take us off. We can creep through the woods to the head of the village, where these cannibals are always dancing round their suppers of human flesh, and if the carbines of the men are loaded with a heavy charge of buck-shot, we can drop forty or fifty at the first volley. After that the thing will be easy enough. The savages