His black eyes glinted icily as they rested in turn upon Peter's face and mine. Then he stumped aft, shouting:
"Rig them boatfalls, mates. Stand by to hoist the cap'n's gig aboard."
Presently we rounded into the wind and came to, and Flint pulled under our lee, rowing slowly, with long, leisurely strokes like a man who is very weary but intent upon finishing a difficult undertaking. Now that he was so close we could see that the scarf around his head was crusted with blood. His coat and shirt were torn to shreds, and his shoes and stockings gummed with mud.
A man heaved him a couple of lines, and he knotted them carefully to bow and stern before he began to climb the cleats of the side ladder, moving stiffly but with unerring precision. As his face lifted above the bulwarks the men nearest to him gasped and trod back upon the toes of those behind them. Such a face I have never seen. 'Twas not alone the terrible blue color and the congested veins that bulged redly under the skin, but a suggestion of experiences beyond the pale of ordinary human understanding. His eyes glared savagely. His mouth was fixed in a grimace of hatred. In his tanned cheeks were riven lines of fear, of anger, of revenge, of cupidity, of insensate ambition—aye, and of remorse.
He dropped to the deck and peered watchfully around him.
"Well, here I be," he croaked. "Ho, you Darby, fetch me a bottle o' rum. Yarely, lad!"
Darby skipped away on his errand, white-cheeked and shaking.
Nobody spoke, and Flint laughed—oh, dreadfully!
"Ye ain't glad to welcome your skipper back, eh? How'd ye make out, Bill?"
Bones had shouldered a path through the clustering ranks, but even he was speechless before Flint's ghastly figure.