CHAPTER XXIV.
CAUGHT IN A NET.
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“I closed my lids and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky, Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet.” |
Captain Brand did not linger long over his frugal dinner, and when he had finished, as if he had not had enough exercise for the last three days, he began to walk with long nervous strides across the saloon.
“He called me coward, did he? and dared to lay his hands on me! By my right arm, my Creole doctor, I’ll teach you not to call hard names again, and I’ll paralyze your hands for all time to come.”
The pirate’s jaws grated like a rusty bolt as he hissed out these murderous threats; but as his eye caught the squirming green silk rope as he swung round on his heel in his walk, he paused and muttered,
“That bit of stuff may be of use. I’ll take it by way of precaution.”
Hereupon he rapidly unrove the cord and coiled it away in the bosom of his shirt. Then looking at his watch, he said, “Ho! the time approaches, and here comes Pedillo.”
Lighting a cigar, he left his dwelling for the last time; and, after pausing to hear a report from Pedillo that his orders had been executed and the vessel all ready for sea, and whispering a few precise directions in return, Captain Brand mounted up the steep face of the crag again, and accosted the signal-man at the station.
“Any thing in sight?”
“Nothing to the eastward, capitano; but it has been a little hazy here away to the southward since meridian, and I can hardly see through it.”