As it was getting near the time, however, for him to be relieved of his watch and go off duty--although it still wanted half an hour to four bells, when it was Tom Aldridge's turn to come on deck again and call up the other men below--he thought he would give Charley Onslow a hail in the meantime, to come up and keep him company until then. Not that he was a bit alarmed at the approach of the felucca, as he said to himself, or that he was anyway at all frightened at being alone on deck with the Greek sailors when so many more of their comrades might be so close at hand. But it was always best to be on the safe side, and there was nothing like a man in authority, as he was, taking due precaution against any possible danger, no matter how remote.

Thus trying to cheat his own conscience, Mr Tompkins sang out for Charley down the companion, awaking him from the soundest sleep he had had for weeks with the echoes of his melodious voice.

"Just like the braying of a jacka.s.s afflicted with bronchitis," as Charley said afterwards ruefully, to his chum.

Much to the first mate's annoyance, he not only awoke Charley, but Tom also; both the lads coming on deck together.

"I didn't call you, Mr Aldridge," he said angrily. "My watch is not over yet."

"I'm quite aware of that," said Tom. "But no fellow could go to sleep after such a hideous row as you made. And besides"--looking at his watch--"I'm due in another twenty minutes, so I thought I had better come up with Charley, since I was woke up. Hullo! what is that?" he added, glancing astern at the felucca, which was now almost within speaking distance, and coming on as if she were going to sheer alongside. "What the deuce is that piratical-looking craft running us aboard like that for? If I were you, Mr Tompkins, I would signal them to stand off, and call up the captain and the other watch."

"I will thank you to mind your own business, Mr Aldridge," replied the chief mate, not at all pleased with the suggestion. "If you are so terribly alarmed at the sight of a common Levantine coaster, you had better go below again."

And he turned on his heel, leaving Tom burning with indignation at having his courage questioned and being taunted of being frightened, especially by such a person as Mr Tompkins.

The felucca was barely a cable's length off now, and in another minute she pa.s.sed underneath the _Muscadine's_ stern so closely that they could have chucked a biscuit on board her.

"Schooner ahoy!" hailed Mr Tompkins. "What's the matter? Do you want anything?"

But no reply was made directly, although the felucca luffed up a bit, and ran for a second or two almost alongside, the ship's main-yard just touching her reed-like masts, and a voice uttered a few words rapidly in Greek, which Charley, although he had a smattering of the language, could not quite understand, although the foreign sailors on board their vessel evidently did, as they replied in the same tongue. And then the dapper little craft's lateen sails filled again as her helm was put down, and she flow away from the _Muscadine_, sailing on a bowline, and heeling over to the wind so as to display half her keel as she topped the waves, just as if the other vessel had been lying still in the water, although she was going a good eight knots by the log in the same direction.

"Did you see that fellow's face on board the felucca who spoke to our men, Charley?" asked Tom anxiously.

"No," said Charley. "But I heard his voice, and that was enough for me."

"Oh, you recognised him, then?"

"Yes. I could swear, only from his voice, that he was the same man who spoke to us in Mohammed's coffee-shop at Beyrout. He had a most peculiar tw.a.n.g in his speech, which I noticed at the time."

"It was the same chap, Charley; I saw him distinctly. I wouldn't be at all surprised that Mohammed was right, and that he is a 'piratt,' as he called him. But if he is after us, I wonder why he didn't board us then. That felucca was crammed full of men."

"Ah, piracy would be rather risky work in these seas, with lots of men-of-war about; at all events, in broad daylight, as it is now. From the distance the ship has run, we can't be very far off Cyprus, and the pirate, if pirate he be, knows well enough that an English frigate has been stationed there ever since we occupied the island. I've no doubt, however, Tom, that he is after us, for I heard, as well as I could make out, from what I know of the language, two phrases, 'In a couple of nights' time,' and 'Look out for the signal,' while the Greek sailors here said, 'It's all right on board,' as if they had arranged everything. I don't like it at all, Tom. What a murderous lot of fellows they are, and what a fool that Tompkins is to insist on having them all in one watch!"

"We'll tell the captain what we've heard and seen," replied Tom.

But at that moment the first mate, who had gone down into the waist of the ship to confer with the Greeks, returned, rubbing his hands and with a scornful smile on his face.

"A nice thing it would have been if I had gone below and wakened up the captain to tell him that a fruit-boat from Rosetta was going to run us down!" said he ironically, speaking at Tom, although he did not directly address him.

"Rosetta does not lie astern of us," said the latter aside, as if to Charley. "And they didn't answer your hail, at all events!"

"Pray, sir, did you understand what they said?" said the mate angrily, speaking this time straight to Tom. "No," he replied.

"Well, then, I do, and I will thank you to hold your tongue. The men have told me all about it. Those fellows in the schooner had lost their reckoning and didn't quite know where they were, and our men, speaking Greek of course, told them."

"And I wonder how they knew?" said Tom. The first mate was posed for a moment, but he quickly recovered himself.

"I suppose any one without being a sailor could tell them that as we've run more than a hundred miles since we left Beyrout yesterday afternoon, and gone in a nor'-westerly course, we must be a little to the southward of Cyprus. But, I'll thank you to mind your own business, as I told you before, Mr Aldridge."

"It is my business," said Tom, "and I'll take care to tell Captain Harding of it."

"Tell the cap'en and be--" said Mr Tomkins in a rage. "But I'll save you the trouble, I will tell him myself," he added a moment afterwards, dashing down into the cabin, and leaving Tom to dismiss his watch and take over the duty without another word.

"That's pretty behaviour!" said Tom to Charley. "I call that relieving a fellow in proper style. No unnecessary ceremony at all."

"Well, you brought it on yourself, Tom," said Charley, with a sympathising grin. "You will badger him so. I suppose, now you are second officer, you intend paying him back for old snubs, eh?"

"I don't want to notice the beggar at all," replied the other. "I wouldn't have spoken to him then if it hadn't been my duty to do so. He is a pig, though. I daresay he hasn't told the captain anything at all, as he hasn't come up."

"You let him alone for making his story right," said Charley. "Captain Harding hasn't come on deck because there's nothing to call him; for that mysterious craft is hull-down now and almost out of sight ahead."

Such was the case; and when the captain did turn out at breakfast time he had heard the first mate's version of the affair, and as the felucca had now quite disappeared below the horizon, altogether pooh-poohed Tom's account of having recognised Mohammed's "corsair," even although Charley backed him up by his statement of what he had heard say in conversation with the stranger.

"Avast there, my dear boys!" said he, speaking good-humouredly to them, as he always did. "That rascally old Turk so stuffed you up with his lying yarns, that you've got pirates on the brain."

Captain Harding, however, did one thing that pleased them, especially Tom, to whom it gave the greatest satisfaction.

Despite the first mate's protest, he remodelled the two watches into which the crew were divided, putting four of the Greek sailors with an equal number of English Jack tars in each, so that should any "little unpleasantness," as he laughingly observed, occur, the foreigners would not have it all their own way.

Mr Tompkins's chagrin when this was effected was delightful to Tom, although he suffered from it, as the first mate, ascribing to his suggestion the credit of the new arrangement, vented his spite on him accordingly, and tried to make his duties as difficult for him as he could.

Nothing was seen further all that day, or the next night, of the felucca, although Tom never went below for a single watch even when his time for relief came--except for meals, of course--remaining on deck and keeping a sharp lookout towards every point of the compa.s.s, not only during his own time of duty but in that of the chief mate as well, despite the latter's broad hints and insulting remarks that his absence would be more agreeable than his company. So, when the following day likewise pa.s.sed without any reappearance of the suspicious stranger, both the lads began to think that their fear of being attacked by pirates was only a chimera, founded, as the captain had said, on Mohammed's fabulous narrative; for Charley had been quite as nervous in the matter as Tom, and had shared his anxious watch with him all through ever since he had recognised the Greek on board the felucca.

Accordingly, the two, their apprehensions quite allayed, turned in together again on the third night the _Muscadine_ was at sea, without any greater antic.i.p.ation of something being about to happen, beyond the usual disagreeables of a sailor's life, than they had the first evening after they left port--both quitting the deck about just the same time as then, too, when Tom was relieved by the first mate at six bells.

"Isn't that a sail out there, Charley, right in the wind's-eye?" said Tom as they turned to descend the companion-stairs, pointing to what looked like a white speck, far-away off in the direction he had named.

"A sail be hanged!" exclaimed Charley. "I never saw such a fellow in my life. You are like Don Quixote, who fancied every windmill a giant. I believe that blessed felucca haunts you in your sleep!"

"No, really, Charley, I didn't think it was her. I meant another sort of sail. But I was mistaken, for I can see nothing now."

"That's always the way with you, Tom. It strikes me that all your sails are sells."

At which brilliant piece of wit on Charley's part both lads laughed so loudly that Mr Tomkins thought they were making fun at his expense, and it was gall and wormwood to him as he paced the deck on the windward side; and "the two inseparables," as Captain Harding dubbed them, then turned in without any further palaver save a brief "good-night," being soon wafted happily into the land of dreams.

A tolerably fast vessel for her size, and in fair sailing trim, as she was only half-loaded--being unable to complete her cargo at Beyrout, whence her going out of her way, as it were, to Smyrna from thence--the _Muscadine_, with the good breeze she had at starting, which had subsequently increased into a very favourable wind, strong, but not too strong to prevent her carrying all plain sail, had made such use of her legs, as sailors say, that she had by this time run over 500 miles from her point of departure, and before morning the captain expected they would sight the southernmost point of Rhodes, and be able to enter the channel between that island and Scarpanto.

He had therefore issued strict injunctions about a sharp lookout being kept forward, stationing one of the English crew in each watch there for that purpose--as he said he didn't believe in any foreigner's eyesight where a ship was concerned--just when he was leaving the deck, which was shortly before Tom and Charley, giving orders at the same time that he should be called as soon as anything was perceived; and these instructions Tom, as the second officer, pa.s.sed on, as in duty bound, to Mr Tompkins when he relieved him, the first mate receiving them, as he now invariably did any statement from his junior, with a characteristic grunt!

There is really no other word in the English language to express the meaning of the ejaculative sound he made, which signified, equally, acquiescence, approval, disapproval, or anything.

It was now midnight.

The captain, Tom and Charley, and one of the English hands who acted as steward, were down below asleep aft, and three English sailors and four Greeks were supposed to be in the same somnolent condition in the foc's'le; and, on deck, were the first mate and four more Englishmen, one of whom was on duty as lookout forward, and another taking his turn at the wheel; while four of the foreigners and the remaining two British seamen lounged about the waist, or stood grouped around the mainmast-bitts amidships, attentive to the orders of the officer of the watch, who, being not in the best of tempers, as usual, did not let them long remain idle for a spell.

That was the situation when the first mate called out, after glancing at his watch, to "make it eight bells;" and almost at the same moment the lookout man forward sang out l.u.s.tily, in a voice that rang through the ship, "Land ho!"

Whether it was the sound of the ship's bell that gave the signal, evidently preconcerted beforehand, or the cry that land was in sight, only the Greek sailors knew; but, at all events, it roused them in a second to action, for with a fierce cry the four foreigners who were amidships rushed on the two Englishmen that shared their watch, drawing their knives and stabbing them desperately as they fell upon them.