Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/200

186 proved that I had been relieved of all my valuables and trifles; and I knew that another way must be found, and that ingenuity alone would help me. So I sat thinking; and all the long afternoon—I knew it was afternoon, as I saw the sun sinking in the horizon and heard the bells, moreover—I examined such devices as came to me, only to reject them and to seek for others.

Towards the second bell in the second "dog" there was a change in the monotony of the scene. I heard an order to heave the barque to, and presently I made haste to put the ropes back in their places and to await the happening. I felt all motion cease, and then someone hauling at the hawser, so that the jolly-boat was pulled against the side of the bigger ship; and, looking up, I saw half-a-dozen of Black's gang watching me from the quarter-deck. Then a ladder was put over the bulwark, and Four-Eyes himself cried out not in an unkindly tone

"Gi-me the soop, bhoys, and let's get it in him; begorra, the divil 'll have him afore the skipper if it's no mate you're givin' him!"

He came down the ladder with a great can of steaming stuff; and the sea having fallen away with the sun to a dead calm, he stepped off the ladder to the stern seat, and then bent over me. But I saw this only, that he had a knife in his belt; and I made up my mind in a moment to get it from him.