I have my watch here in my hand; I give you thirty seconds to join
me in."

There was a pause.

"Come, my fine fellow," continued the captain, "don't hang so long in
stays. I'm risking my life and the lives of these good gentlemen every
second."

There was a sudden scuffle, a sound of blows, and out burst Abraham Gray
with a knife-cut on the side of the cheek, and came running to the
captain, like a dog to the whistle.

"I'm with you, sir," said he.

And the next moment he and the captain had dropped aboard of us, and we
had shoved off and given way.

We were clear out of the ship, but not yet ashore in our stockade.

CHAPTER XVII

NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR--THE JOLLY-BOAT'S LAST TRIP

This fifth trip was quite different from any of the others. In the first
place, the little gallipot of a boat that we were in was gravely
overloaded. Five grown men, and three of them--Trelawney, Redruth, and
the captain--over six feet high, was already more than she was meant to
carry. Add to that the powder, pork, and the bread-bags. The gunwale was
lipping astern. Several times we shipped a little water, and my breeches
and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet before we had gone a
hundred yards.

The captain made us trim the boat, and we got her to lie a little more
evenly. All the same, we were afraid to breathe.

In the second place, the ebb was now making--a strong, rippling current
running westward through the basin, and then south'ard and seaward down
the straits by which we had entered in the morning. Even the ripples
were a danger to our overloaded craft, but the worst of it was that we
were swept out of our true course, and away from our proper
landing-place behind the point. If we let the current have its way we
should come ashore beside the gigs, where the pirates might appear at
any moment.

"I cannot keep her head for the stockade, sir," said I to the captain. I
was steering, while he and Redruth, two fresh men, were at the oars.
"The tide keeps washing her down. Could you pull a little stronger?"

"Not without swamping the boat," said he. "You must bear up, sir, if you
please--bear up until you see you're gaining."

I tried, and found by experiment that the tide kept sweeping us westward
until I had laid her head due east, or just about right angles to the
way we ought to go.

"We'll never get ashore at this rate," said I.

"If it's the only course that we can lie, sir, we must eve