“You have a kinder heart than I have, Halcott, else you’d have made that scoundrel Durdley walk the plank, and hanged the rest at the yardarm, one by one.”
“The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him,” said Halcott, laughing.
“But will you care to land on the island we are in search of, with these fellows?” asked Tandy. “Mind,” he added, before Halcott could answer, “I take no small blame to myself for having engaged such scoundrels. Want of time was no excuse for me. Better to have sacrificed a month than sail as shipmates with such demons as these.”
“Keep your mind easy, my dear friend; I’ll get rid of them, by hook or by crook, before we reach our island.”
“It relieves me to hear you say so, but indeed, Halcott, ’twixt hook and crook, if I had my way, I should choose the crook. I’d give the beggars a bag of biscuit and a barrel of pork, and maroon them on the first desert island we come in sight of.”
I do not know that Halcott paid much attention to the latter part of Tandy’s speech. He was at this moment looking uneasily at a bank of dark, rock-like clouds that was rising slowly up to the north and east.
“Have you noticed the glass lately, Tandy?” he said quietly.
“I’ll jump down and see it now.”
“Why,” he said, on returning, “it is going tumbling down. I’ll shorten sail at once. We’re going to have it out of that quarter.”
There was little time to lose, for the wind was already blowing over the cold, dark sea in little uncertain puffs and squalls. Between each there was a lull; yet each, when it did come, lasted longer and blew stronger than those that had preceded it.