Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/351

Rh gestures and his woe-begone face. It was well on in the afternoon before the position changed in any way, and I had gone down with the Captain to the lower saloon to make the pretence of lunching. There we sat—"Four-Eyes" with us—a miserable trio, cracking jokes, and expressing desperate hopes; sending up the nigger every other moment to learn how the ironclad lay, and much comforted when at the fifth coming he said— "You gain, sar, plenty sar; you run right away, sar."

"We do?" cried Black, who jumped from his seat and ran up the companion-way to confirm the tale, and he shouted down to us, "Crack another bottle, if it's the last, and give it to the nigger; we're leaving them!"

His elation was contagious. "Four-Eyes" awoke from his lethargy, and drank a pint of the wine at a draught. The nigger put out a glass with a satisfied leer. The Captain took a bottle and laid his hand on the cork. But there it stayed, for at that moment there came a horrible sound of grating and tearing from the engine-room, and it was succeeded by a moment of dead and chilling silence.

"The second engine's gone," said a man above, quite calmly, and we knew the worst, and went on deck again.

We found the crew sullen and muttering, but