Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/333

 of a dozen persons, under cover of the trees, he held a council of war as to the best means of securing a rapid retreat. Truth to tell, the skipper would willingly have given the whole worth of her cargo to be once more on her deck, or even under the guns of 'The Bashful Maid.'

Slap-Jack gave his opinion unasked.

"Up foresail," said he, with a characteristic impetuosity: "run out the guns—double-shotted and depressed; sport every rag of bunting; close in round the convoy; get plenty of way on, and run clean through, exchanging broadsides as we go ahead!"

But Smoke-Jack treated the suggestion with contempt.

"That's wot I call rough-and-tumble fighting, your honour," he grumbled, with a sheepish glance at the ladies; for with all his boasted knowledge of their sex, he was unaccustomed to such specimens as these, and discomfited, as he admitted to himself, by the "trim on 'em." "Them's not games as is fitted for such a company as this here, if I may make so bold. No, no, your honour, it's good advice to keep to windward of a nigger, and it's my opinion as we should weather them on this here tack; get down to the beach with a long leg and a short one—half-a-mile and more below the town—fire three shots, as agreed on, for the boat, and so pull the ladies aboard on the quiet. After that, we might come ashore again, d'ye see, and have it out comfortable. What say you, Bottle-Jack?"

That worthy turned his quid, and looked preternaturally wise; the more so that the question was somewhat unexpected. He was all for keeping the ladies safe, he decided, now they had got them. Captain Kidd always did so, he remembered, and Captain Kidd could sail a ship and fight a ship, &c.; but Bottle-Jack was more incoherent than usual—utterly adrift under the novelty of his situation, and gasping like a gudgeon at the Marquise and her daughter, whose beauty seemed literally to take away his breath.

George soon made up his mind.

"Is there any way to the beach," said he, addressing himself rather to Cerise than her mother, "without touching the road to Port Welcome? It seemed to me, as we marched up, that the high road made a considerable