human
Then I suppose you took her again, doctor?
gpt
Well, hardly, said Uncle Paul.
human
It was Cross and the lads who did that.
gpt
More shame to him, then, growled the skipper.
human
I should have thought you were seaman enough, Joe Cross, to have kept her afloat and not run her aground like this.
gpt
Well, I do call that ungrateful, cried Rodd.
human
I say, uncle, oughtn't he to have saved the schooner from being taken?
gpt
That's one for me, doctor, said the skipper, with a grim smile and a twinkle in his eye.
human
The boys of this here generation seem to grow up pretty sharp. But he's quite right. They pretty well caught a weasel asleep that time.
gpt
But how was it?
human
How was it, my lad? Why, we was hard at work one morning, when up the river comes another of them nice respectable schooners in the oil trade. Oil trade, indeed! Rank slavers, that's what they were, carrying on trade with one of those murderous chiefs up country! Set of black Satans as attack villages and carry off the poor wretches to sell to your oil traders for sending off to the plantations. Well, one don't like killing fellow-creatures, or seeing them pulled down below by the crocs, but somehow I don't feel so very uncomfortable about them as we had to fight with and have got the worst of it. What are you smiling at, young Squire Rodd?
gpt
I was only thinking how you always hated the slave trade, captain.
human
Right, said Captain Chubb, with a friendly nod.
gpt
Well, the schooner sends her skipper aboard the three-master. Then he comes to where I was busy at work with the men, putting the finishing touches to the brig, and tells me and the Count a long tale about his having come up to join his friend the Spanish captain, who he hears has gone up the river for a row. Then he goes back to his schooner, makes her snug, and it seemed as if him and his men had all gone to sleep, when it was me.
human
You?
gpt
Well, what they call metyphorically, my boy, for I was wide awake enough; but I couldn't see anything beyond the _Dagobert_, nor the Count neither, for he wanted her afloat. Then the time went on, and all very quiet, till just in the middle of one of the hottest days when I was in full feather, thinking that I could tell the Count that night that the job was done, and we could let her sit the water again next day when the tide served, all at once we had a surprise. There were only four or five men aboard the schooner, and I suppose they were keeping their watch, but just all at once a couple of boats rowed up to them, one from one schooner, one from the other, and before any of us knew what was up, our fellows were swimming for the shore, and if it hadn't been for the Count, who was on the look-out for crocs, and let them have two barrels twice over, neither of the poor fellows would have joined their mates as had been working with me.
human
Well, continued the skipper,
gpt
I felt as if all the wind had been knocked out of me, and as soon as I could speak and quite understand that my schooner had been took, I began to bully-rag the poor lads who had just escaped with their lives, for, not having time to get a gun or a cutlass, they had been almost as helpless on board as they were in the water among them reptiles. I couldn't even believe it then, and began questioning the lads, and you might have knocked me down with a feather, as people say, and the Count there with another, when they all swore that our Spanish skipper had led the men from his three-master in one of the boats. Then we began to see the worst.