Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/197

Rh tarpaulin, folded twice, had been propped under my head, but my left hand was bound close to the boat thwart, and there was a rope doubled round my right forearm so that I could not raise myself an inch, though my right hand was free. The meaning of this apparent neglect I soon learnt. There was a flask on the edge of the tarpaulin which supported my head, and by it half a dozen rather fine captain's biscuits. I had a prodigious thirst on me, and I drank from the flask; but found it to contain weak brandy, and would willingly have exchanged thrice its contents for a long draught of pure water. But the biscuits I could not touch; and I began to be chilled with the rain which fell copiously, and with the sea which sent spray in fountains upon my body.

Up to this time, I had heard no sound of human voices, but the silence was broken at last by a shout, and the boat ceased to move. "All hands, make sail!" cried someone, apparently above me; and after that I heard the "yo-heave" of the men hauling, as I judged, at a main-sail. The second order, "Sheets home!" proved to me that I was behind a sailing ship, perhaps a yacht which these men had secured, as they got La France—and burnt her. I shuddered at the second thought, and my head began to burn again despite the wet. Did they mean to leave me there until the end of it, when the cold and my wound should do their work? Had they forgotten