Tonga shook his head.
"You were so giddy you knew not what happened."
Tonga nodded, grinning, yet with little taste to mirth, but uneasily.
"Well," says Rodrigues, "we must hear what your little friend can tell us about it. Come, my boy—what do you know about this business?"
The boy, shivering in every limb (as with a quartan), glanced at the black, who returned a wicked look of warning.
"I know naught, your honor," cries the little fellow, "save that he called to me from below for meat and drink."
"Nothing else?"
"Naught, your honor."
Then Rodrigues says a word to two of the seamen, who straightway ran to the fore end and came back, bearing a long plank betwixt them; and this they set athwart the bulwarks, a little less than midway of its length, and with its longer end resting on a chest that stood over that way.
"Get up!" says Rodrigues.