“Jacob!” cried Marables.
“Will not live to tell the tale,” added Fleming, with a firm voice, as he put another match into the bottle, and then relighted the lamp. “Come,” said Fleming, fiercely; “out of the cabin immediately.”
I prepared to obey him. Fleming went out, and I was following him round his side of the table, when Marables interposed.
“Stop: Fleming, what is that you mean to do?”
“Silence him!” retorted Fleming.
“But not murder him, surely?” cried Marables, trembling from head to foot. “You will not, dare not, do that.”
“What is it that I dare not do, Marables? but it is useless to talk; it is now his life or mine. One must be sacrificed, and I will not die yet to please him.”
“You shall not—by God, Fleming, you shall not!” cried Marables, seizing hold of my other arm, and holding me tight.
I added my resistance to that of Marables; when Fleming, perceiving that we should be masters, took a pistol from his pocket, and struck Marables a blow on the head, which rendered him senseless. Throwing away the pistol, he dragged me out of the cabin. I was strong, but he was very powerful; my resistance availed me nothing: by degrees he forced me to the side of the barge, and lifting me in his arms, dashed me into the dark and rapidly flowing water. It was fortunate for me that the threat of Fleming, upon our first meeting, had induced me to practise swimming, and still more fortunate that I was not encumbered with any other clothes than my shirt, in which I had come on deck. As it was, I was carried away by the tide for some time before I could rise, and at such a distance that Fleming, who probably watched, did not perceive that I came up again. Still, I had but little hopes of saving myself in a dark night, and at nearly a quarter of a mile from shore. I struggled to keep myself afloat, when I heard the sound of oars; a second or two more and I saw them over my head. I grasped at and seized the last, as the others passed me, crying “Help!”
“What the devil! Oars, my men; here’s somebody overboard,” cried the man, whose oar I had seized.