“Ready, sir,” cried the former, as the links rattled and clinked over the deck; and they stood waiting for the cask to be removed for the chain to be laid down in its place.
“Now then, in with it!” cried Mark.
“In with it, sir?”
“Yes; into the cask.”
“Oh!” cried Tom Fillot, with an exultant cry, and the next moment the chain was being rattled into the empty cask at a rapid rate, and in very short time, a quarter of a ton was occupying the place of the water.
“I think that’ll puzzle ’em now, sir,” cried Tom; and Mark Vandean breathed freely once again.
But there were the blacks to punish, and the men fell back while Mark turned angrily upon the two culprits, who stood trembling before him with the light from a lantern one of the men had fetched thrown full upon their faces.
Only a short time before the big black had been an utter savage, but now in this very brief space, though unable fully to comprehend the words and ways of the English officers, he had grown to realise what discipline and authority meant; and as he stood there before Mark, who looked frowning and stern, he literally shivered, his eyes dropped, and he stooped before the midshipman, as if expecting a blow. For he knew that he had betrayed his trust, and that some punishment was about to be inflicted upon him for his lapse from duty.
The men looked on eagerly, and thoughts of flogging, putting in irons, even of hanging, flashed across their minds, as they gazed in their young officer’s face.
Mark did not speak for a few moments, and then drawing a long breath, and forgetting his youthfulness, everything in the fact that he was in supreme authority as a British officer there, he spoke out firmly.