"I'll stay where I am."
"Oh, very good," replied the tar; "mum's the word. I thought your berth wasn't over cheerful."
Jack Tiller gave a hoist at his slacks, and with something between a sigh and a grunt, he wheeled round and went on deck.
* * * * *
"If I could only see my way out of this, I should like better than any thing to fire the ship," said Hunston, to himself; "fire it and watch it close by, chuckling at them while they roasted. What a glorious return it would be for them. By the powers, it is about the only thing I could do to wipe them all off at once, all, all! Jack, Harvey, Emily, that Yankee braggart—curse him!"
And Hunston sat brooding in the black and evil-smelling hold day after day.
The only companion of his solitude being his own dark thoughts, his vicious resolves for vengeance.
"It is my own cursed ill-luck," he would say to himself again and again, "to be beholden to this Harkaway for my life. Why, even now, he has saved me again, saved me in spite of himself. That's the merry side of the question."
Merry as it was, it never made him smile.
One dreadful thought filled his poor mind.