Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/151

 THE BO'SUN'S STORY

OTHING happened, sir, for some hour or so after you left, and then things made up for lost time, as 'twere, and came fast and quick. I was sitting outside this here room with the door on the jar—outside I was, 'cos I couldn't bear the sight of that schoolmaster's face. I think you'll own yourself, sir, that it wasn't just exactly wot you might call 'a pleasant evening face' especially, a-battered about as it was. Poor Bill Spiker and Morgan Walters here was asleep downstairs, for we'd agreed that I should stand first watch.

"Well, the boys had brought us over our allowance of rum from the barn, and we'd all had a drop, though I kept most of mine to the end of my watch, thinking to use it for a nightcap, as 'twere, but the little drop I did get was making me feel very drowsy, and I began to think the next hour would never go, when I could wake up Bill Spiker. Presently I hears a noise of galloping horses. I goes to the window on the stairs there, and looks out. Right along the road I could see those same riders with lit-up faces wot I'd seed the night before