Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/223

 Even if the words were not sufficient to explain the situation to the sailors, the first figures of the cavalcade were all sufficient. A donkey led by two jack-o'-lanterns on foot jolted out of the fog. Upon its back was a man bound and gagged, supported on either side by two devil-men. That the gagged wretch was the captain needed no words to tell, for his uniform showed by the lantern's light, and there right behind him, sure enough, was the blunderbuss in question, pointed by a snuffy little devil called by his colleagues Hellspite, who sat hunched up on a shoddy little pony. This little group halted at a convenient distance from the sailors in the ditch, and Hellspite again rehearsed his little speech, ending up with:

Now the poor bo'sun in command had all his life grown so used to taking other people's orders that he didn't know what to do for the best. He liked the captain and didn't want to see him killed, though he knew what he must be suffering in his ridiculous position. He knew that had the captain but got the use of his speech he would have shouted, "Fire! and be damned to 'em!" But then the captain had not got the use of speech. The Scarecrow and Hellspite knew enough of the man to see to that, and as they had no great desire to be fired at, they had seen that the gags were