Page:Demon ship, or, The pirate of the Mediterranean.pdf/13

Rh obeying the signal; and if you get out of sight of that one distant sail, you are lost.'—'Think you, then, that the Demon Ship is in these seas?' said I, anxiously. Girod came close to me. With a countenance of remorse and despair which I can never forget, he grasped my arm, and held it towards heaven,—'Look up to God!' he whispered; you are on board the Demon Ship! A step was heard near the cabin, and Girod was darting from it; but I held him by the sleeve. 'For heaven's sake, for miladi's sake, for your own sake,' he whispered, 'let not a look, a word, shew that you are acquainted with this sccretsecret [sic]. All I can do is to try and gain time for you. But be prudent, or you are lost!' and quitted the cabin as he spoke. When I thought how long, and how fearlessly, the 'Elizabeth' had lain amid the trading-vessels at Valetta, and how she had sailed from that port under a powerful convoy, I was almost tempted to believe that Girod had been practising a joke on me. 'What have you been doing there?' said a voice I had never heard before, and whose ruffianly tones could hardly be subdued by his efforts at a whisper. 'My pipe go out,' answered Girod Jacqueminot, 'and I not so imprudent to light it at de beenacle. So I go just hold it over de lamp of Monsieur, and he slecpsleep [sic], sleep, snore, snore all de while, and know noting. I have never seed one man dorme so profound.'

I now heard the voices of the captain, Girod, and the ruffian, in closcclose [sic] and earnest parlance. The expletives that graced it shall be omitted. But what first confirmed my fears, was the hearing our captain obsequiously address the ruffian-speaker as commander of the vcsselvessel [sic], while the former received from his companion the familiar appellative of Jack. They werowere [sic] walking the deck, and their whispered speech only reached me as they from time to time approached my cabin, and was again lost as they receded. I thought, however, that Girod seemed, by stopping occasionally, as if in the vehemence of speech, to draw them, as much as possible, towards my cabin. I then listened with an intentness which made me almost fear to brcathebreathe [sic]. 'But again I say, Jack,' said the voice of thcthe [sic] real captain,' what are we to do with these fine passengers of ours? I am sick of this stage-play work; and the men are tired, by this time, of being kept down in the hold. We shall have them mutiny if we stifle them much longer below. Look how that sail is sinking on the horizon. She can never come up with us now. There be eight good sacks in the forecastle, and we can spare them due ballast. That would do the job decently enough for our passengers—ha!' 'Oh! mine goot captain, you are man of spearet,'