[Illustration: WITH A TREMENDOUS CHEER, FLUNG THEMSELVES UPON THE PIRATES
At Rhodes they had taken on board a dozen bucket-loads of earth. The night before, some of these had been emptied into a large tub, which was then filled up with water and stirred briskly, after which the sailors had gone aloft and wetted the sails with muddy water, rendering their appearance dingy in the extreme. Here and there white patches had been left, which gave the sails the appearance of being old and recently mended, and with the yards set at different angles and slackened rigging, the _Tigress_ would not have been recognized as the smart craft that had, twenty-four hours before, sailed from Rhodes. The sailors were all in high glee. After the hard work they had had at Acre they looked upon this as a holiday, and entered with the greatest zest into the work of disguising the ship.
"Now, lads, you must sit down," Wilkinson said, "and only five or six heads must be shown above the bulwarks. They doubtless have some good glasses taken from the ships they have captured, and if they saw that we had an unusually strong crew they might smell a rat."
It was now a dead calm, the sails hung idly down, and the brig lay almost motionless on a waveless sea.
"I am pretty sure that I can make out the upper spars of two or three craft behind that long, low islet, Wilkinson," Edgar said after, for the twentieth time, gazing long and earnestly through his telescope.
"I fancied so two or three times, Edgar, but I am by no means sure that it is not fancy. I felt more sure of it at first than I do now, for there is a slight mist rising from the water. If they don't come out to us by the afternoon we will go in and have a look at them. We have got half a dozen sweeps on board, and with those and the boats we could work her in in a couple of hours."
"I hope we sha'n't have to do that," Edgar replied. "They would guess what we were at once, and would be scattering in all directions. We might pick up one or two, the rest would get off and carry news of us to all the islands round."
"Perhaps you are right," Wilkinson agreed. "It would certainly be unfortunate to begin by giving them a scare."
"Besides," Edgar went on, "if the calm holds till night, they may come out and try to take us by surprise."