“Oh, don’t ask me, sir; I arn’t no scholard. I’m all muzzly like. Seems to me that we’ve been to one o’ they casks,—and all the time it don’t. No; we arn’t had no drink. We shouldn’t with all that there trouble a-hanging over us.”
“Yes, Bob,” I said eagerly, for he had touched a chord which set me thinking—I mean trying to think; “that trouble hanging over us. There was some trouble, wasn’t there?”
“Oh yes, sir; we was in a lot o’ trouble about something, but blest if I know what it was.”
“Well; try, man,” I cried. “Think about trouble. What trouble was it?”
“No, sir, I dunno,” he cried, after a pause. “We’re aboard the Burgh Castle still, arn’t we?”
“I don’t know,” I began. “Yes, of course we are, and we must be down in the hold. It’s coming now, I think. Why did we come down here? Surely one of you must know.”
“It arn’t likely, sir, if you don’t,” growled Dumlow.
“But what were we in trouble about?” I said, for—I cannot describe it—there was the thick feeling of something having happened; but strange as it may seem, neither I nor the men could make anything out about what had preceded our unnatural sleep.
“It’s a rum ’un,” said Bob Hampton at last. “I dunno. It’s a rum ’un.”
“But cannot either of you think at all?” I cried in agony. “It seems so horrible to be here like this in black darkness, and not know how or why.”