Mark and Betts met, by agreement, alongside of the schooner, as soon as their respective duties elsewhere would allow.  As the Reef, proper, was an island, they knew no enemy could find his way on it without coming by water, or by passing over the narrow bridge which has already been mentioned as crossing the little strait near the spring.  This rendered them tolerably easy for the moment, though Mark had assured his companion it was not possible for the canoes to get to the Reef under several hours.  Neither of the men could sleep, however, and they thought it as well to be on the look-out, and in company, as to be tossing about in their berths, or hammocks, by themselves.  The conversation turned on their prospects, almost as a matter of course.

“We are somewhat short-handed, sir, to go to quarters ag’in them vagabonds,” observed Betts, in reply to some remark of the governor’s.  “I counted a hundred and three of their craft when they was off the Peak the other day, and not one on ’em all had less than four hands aboard it, while the biggest must have had fifty.  All told, I do think, Mr. Mark, they might muster from twelve to fifteen hundred fighting men.”

“That has been about my estimate of their force, Bob; but, if they were fifteen thousand, we must bring them to action, for we fight for everything.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Betts, ejecting the tobacco juice in the customary way, “there’s reason in roasted eggs, they say, and there’s reason in firing a few broadsides afore a body gives up.  What a different place this here rock’s got to be, sir, from what it was when you and I was floating sea-weed and rafting loam to it, to make a melon or a cucumber bed!  Times is changed, sir, and we’re now at war.  Then it was all peace and quiet; and now it’s all hubbub and disturbance.”

“We have got our wives here now, and that I think you’ll admit is something, Bob, when you remember the pains taken by yourself to bring so great a happiness about,”

“Why, yes, sir—­I’ll allow the wives is something—­”

“Ship ahoy!” hailed a voice in good English, and in the most approved seaman-like tones of the voice.

The hail came from the margin of the island nearest to the Reef; or that which was connected with the latter by means of the bridge, but not from a point very near the latter.

“In the name of heavenly mercy!” exclaimed Betts, “what can that mean, governor?”

“I know that voice,” said Mark, hurriedly; “and the whole matter begins to clear up to me.  Who hails the Rancocus?”

“Is that ship the Rancocus, then?” answered the voice from the island.

“The Rancocus, and no other—­are you not Bill Brown, her late carpenter?”

“The very same, God bless you, Mr. Woolston, for I now know your voice, too.  I’m Bill, and right down glad am I to have things turn out so.  I half suspected the truth when I saw a ship’s spars this afternoon in this place, though little did I think, yesterday, of ever seeing anything more of the old ’Cocus.  Can you give me a cast across this bit of a ferry, sir?”