“Yes, sir; I should like half-a-dozen strong chaps in the boat, though.”
“Well, take them,” said Mr Reardon, who was speaking less severely now. “I’ll have the uninjured men in irons this time. Be careful.”
“And if I’d my way, I’d have ’em all in iron boxes, ’cept their hands.”
The boatswain said this to me, with a nod, as the first lieutenant turned away, and, unable to control my curiosity, I sprang up on the bulwark to look into the boat.
“Let’s have a look too,” cried Smith, and he jumped up to gain a position much closer than mine, but quitted his hold and dropped back on deck, lost his footing, and came down sitting; for, as he leaned over the boat’s gunnel, one of the prisoners made a sudden snap at him, after the fashion of an angry dog, and the marines burst into a roar of laughter.
Smith got up scowling and indignant.
“My hands slipped,” he said to me aloud. And then, to carry off his confusion, “How many are there, Herrick?”
“Three lots of six,” I said, as I now saw plainly enough how it was that the prisoners were in such a strange position. For they had been dragged together and their pigtails lashed into a tight knot, a process admirably suited to the object in hand—to render them perfectly helpless; and their aspect certainly did not excite my anger.
Meanwhile the boatswain had stepped into the swinging boat, and he turned to me, but looked at Smith as he spoke.