“What is your plan?� she asked.
“I want you to dress yourself in your stoutest clothes with your heaviest shoes, wrap yourself up in a boat cloak and take with you a few necessaries for your comfort. I will go and rummage the lazarette for provisions, and I will see if I can turn up any more weapons in the captain’s room. I dare not go to the arms chest. It is below in the hold anyway, and I can’t waste the time to hunt it out. We must hurry.�
“Why, you said they were insensible.�
“They carry liquor like a line-of-battle ship her tops’ls in a storm,� I answered. “They’ll recover their senses before we know it. I want as long a start as possible, and indeed I must hasten now.�
“Wait a moment,� she said. She opened a drawer under her berth and drew out a leather case, which she opened and placed before me. There were two ivory-handled, silver-mounted pistols in it. “They belonged to my father,� she said, “with one of them he—he—� her voice broke. I nodded. I knew what he had done with one of them. She rummaged farther and drew out an exquisite sword, quite unlike my heavy one, but if I could judge anything about weapons, of fine temper and strength and with its hilt studded with diamonds. “This was my father’s, too,� she said, and I recognized it also. It was that I had taken from Arcester. I have worn it many times since in the King’s service, for we found it on the ship again, after—but I go ahead of my story!
The pistols were smaller than my huge barkers, better suited for her hand, and to load them from the flasks which accompanied them was the work of a few minutes. I thrust my own heavy weapons back into my belt. I then buckled her two pistols around her waist and bade her have the sword handy also. We might need all these weapons, though I did not think so.
Then I left her and went out on deck. The men were in a profound drunken stupor. Pimball was sound asleep, Glibby was nodding, the lookout aft could hardly keep himself awake and the lookout forward was in much the same condition. The rest of the men were as helpless as logs, like dead men in fact. I made the circuit of the ship. Glibby leered at me as I drew abreast of him.
“Everyth-th-ing a-all-r-right?� he hiccoughed.
“Everything,� I answered shortly, “the old barque doesn’t need much watching tonight, you can see.�
The wind had fallen somewhat and the sea was much calmer.