"But I also am a friend of the owner and as friend of the owner, I spoke just now, forgetting my place as mate, I ask you to pardon me."
In his words and his manner there was something so oily and insincere that from the bottom of my heart I distrusted him, and so, obviously enough, did Gideon North. But the man's sudden change of front took the weapons, so to speak, out of the captain's hands; and before he could reply Matterson said, "Mr. Upham, what are your wishes in the matter?"
I looked first at my uncle, then I looked back at Matterson, and as I looked at Matterson, I caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Neil Gleazen, who was staring at Uncle Seth with a scowl on his brow and with his lips moving. Turning again to my uncle, I once more saw on his face, now so weak, the pathetically timid expression that I had come to know so well.
"If there's no immediate danger—" he began.
"There's none at all!" Matterson and Gleazen cried with one voice.
"Then let us go ashore, say for merely half an hour."
Captain North, with a shrug as of resignation, put the trumpet to his lips and gave orders that brought the brig into the wind with sails ashiver.
"Come, lads," Gleazen cried to Arnold and me, "the more the merrier."
So into the boat we climbed, and I for one was pleased to find that Abe Guptil had an oar.