FullReads

“Pull for your lives, boys,” shouted Pengelly. And they did pull, to the last man. They pulled so that they reached the frigate just as the tender, having run up in the wind and fallen alongside, began uncovering hatches.

Two officers were leaning overside and watching–and a couple of the tender’s crew were reaching down their arms into the hold. They were lifting somebody through the hatchway, and the body they lifted clung for a moment to the hatchway coaming, to steady itself.

“Sally!” screamed a voice from the gig.

The little officer in the stern of the tender cast a glance back at the sound and knew the tailor at once. He must have owned sharp sight, that man.

“Oh, you’ve come for your money, have you?” says he. And, looking up at the two officers overhead, he salutes, saying: “We’ve made a tidy haul, Sir–thanks to that man.”

“I don’t want your money. I want my wife!” yelled Hancock.

“And I mine!” yelled Pengelly.

“And I mine!” yelled Treleaven.

By this time the gig had fallen alongside the tender, and the women in the tender’s hold were coming up to daylight, one by one. Sal herself stood watching the jail-delivery; and first of all she blinked a bit, after the darkness below, and next she let out a laugh, and then she reached up a hand and began unplaiting her pigtail.

“Be you the Captain of this here ship?” asks she, looking up and addressing herself to one of the officers leaning overside.

“Yes, my man; this here’s the Ranger frigate, and I’m her Captain. I’m sorry for you–it goes against my grain to impress men in this fashion: but the law’s the law, and we’re ready for sea, and if you’ve any complaints to make I hope you’ll cut ’em short.”

“I don’t know,” says Sal, “that I’ve any complaints to make, except that I was born a woman. That I went on to marry that pea-green tailor yonder is my own fault, and we’ll say no more about it.”

By this time all the women on the tender were following Sal’s example and unshredding their back-hair. By this time, too, every man aboard the frigate was gathered at the bulwarks, looking down in wonderment. There beneath ’em stood a joke too terrible to be grasped in one moment.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Rogers,” says the Captain in a voice cold as a knife, “but you appear to have made a mistake.”

The little officer had turned white as a sheet: but he managed to get in his say before the great laugh came. “I have, Sir, to my sorrow,” says he, turning viciously on Hancock; “a mistake to be cast up against me through my career. But I reckon,” he adds, “I leave the punishment for it in good hands.” He glanced at Sally.

“You may lay to that, young man!” says she heartily. “You may lay to that every night when you says your prayers.”