Then the captain began his walk of the quarter-deck with vain whistlings for the breeze.
But it was charming laying upon the old sail listening to the twitter of Mother Cary’s chickens, and the cool swash of the sea about the rudder.
It is not a wonder, then, that I fell into fast sleep, only to awaken by the bell striking “one, two, three, four,” which I knew had the meaning of two o’clock of the morning, and I had some regret at my foolish whim, for it had become quite cool and damp. Yet I knew I might not release myself until four o’clock, when old Dan again had the wheel.
I raised a corner of the cover and peeped out. Spanish Joe stood with one hand upon the wheel, looking sideways in the half darkness of the night. The light from the binnacle was upon his swarthy face with strength, and I told myself, with a little shiver, that it was the face of a brigand such as I had gazed upon in some gallery of pictures. But figure to yourself my feelings as Mr. Atkin, after listening a moment at the open window of the state-room of the captain, came directly behind the wheel, and seating himself upon the taffrail so near that I could touch him, began with an absent drumming of his fingers upon the cover of the boat itself!
“Everybody is sound asleep but you and I, Joe,” he said in half a whisper.
“Bueno,” was the reply of Joe; “an’ now, s’pose you say what you have think ’bout us try to get dis money you tell us of, eh?”
“Well, Joe,” he answers, and you cannot imagine to yourself how like oil was his voice, “I’ve laid the thing out about this way. To-morrow night when Dan is steering and the Swede on the lookout, we’ll give young Waters a little pleasant surprise, and when he comes to himself, he’ll find that his hands are lashed and something over his mouth to keep him from making a noise—savey, Joe?”
I trembled in every limb, and was with a cold perspiration on my face. Had I been one who swoons readily I should have fainted. But at once I recovered myself. “Be brave, Bessie,” I repeated to my heart: “it is for the dear captain’s sake.”
“Then we’ll get the captain out,” the wretch continued, as Spanish Joe made a small nod of the head, “and serve him so, and if the cook, or Dan, or the Swede make a fuss (which they won’t dare do) they’ll see that the balance of power is with us, for we’ve got pistols, and they haven’t. Eh, Joe?”
“Then w’at?” asked Joe with much of eagerness.