"'Look,' say'st thou? Ay, then, look! Nay, gloat if thou wilt, tyrant—miscreant shall I say?—in human form! Yielding, if I may quote my friend here"—Mr. Sturge laid both handcuffed hands on the shoulder of Bill Adams—"yielding to none, I say, in my admiration of Britain's Navy, I hold myself free to protest against the lawlessness of its minions. I say deliberately, sir, its minions. My name, sir, is Orlando B. Sturge. If that conveys aught to such an intelligence as yours, you will at once turn this vessel round and convey us back to Plymouth with even more expedition than you brought us hither."
Captain Crang fell back and caught at the mizzen shrouds.
"Was I so bad as all that?" he stammered, as Ben Jope, believing him attacked by apoplexy, rushed up the poop-ladder and bent over him.
"Lor' bless you, sir," said Mr. Jope, "the best of us may be mistaken at times. But as I've al'ays said, and will maintain, gentlemen will be gentlemen."
But Captain Crang, letting slip his grasp of the shrouds, plumped down on deck in a sitting posture and with a sound like the echo of his own name.
CHAPTER XV.
UP-CHANNEL.
"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,"
"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,"