"Hah! Then feed us, dear lad, and then we shall be ready to fight or do
anything you like. But hullo! What about Dick Roberts?"

"Wounded, but getting better. He's in the next room, doing nothing but
sleep."

"Next room! Upon my word you middies are pretty sybarites! Well, let
us have this prog."

"Come down to the dining-room," said Murray. "Mr Anderson cannot do
better than sleep."

"Dining-room!" said the second lieutenant in a whisper, as they left the
chamber. "What next? You haven't got such a thing as a cellar of wine
on the premises, have you, my lad?"

"Yes, sir," said Murray, laughing; "but that's where we have our powder
magazine."

"Give us something to eat, then, my dear fellow, and then let's see if
we can't use the powder to blow up the two schooners which are pounding
the _Seafowl_. Hark! They're at it still."

"No," said Murray, listening; "those must be the _Seafowl's_ guns."

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE.

THE CAPTAIN'S LAST BLOW UP.

Murray proved to be right, for the distant reports which came from
somewhere on the far side of the island proved to be the last fired by
the man-o'-war, which, shorthanded though she was, and desperately
attacked by the powerful well-manned schooners, had kept up a continuous
fight, so cleverly carried on that it had at last ended by the running
ashore of one of the big slaving craft, and the pounding of the other
till in desperation the skipper, who proved to be the cunning Yankee
hero of the lugger trick,--the twin brother of the scoundrel Huggins who
had met his fate in the explosion,--set his swift craft on fire before
taking, with the remnants of the crew, to the woods.

It was not until a couple of days later that, after extinguishing the
fire on board the second schooner and setting sail with her for the
harbour, Captain Kingsberry commenced firing signal guns to recall his
scattered crew, and communication was made by the help of Caesar.

"Yes, Massa Murray Frank," he said eagerly; "Caesar soon show um way to
where big gun go off."

He, too, it was who gave signals which resulted in the collection of as
many of the plantation slaves as were wanted to bear the wounded men in
palanquins through the maze-like cane brakes and down to the shore,
where a shady hospital was started in which Dr Reston could rule
supreme, his patients chuckling to one another as they luxuriated in the
plantation coffee, sugar, molasses, fruit and tobacco, and th