“Oh, you will, eh?” sneered Price. “You’d better not, though, because I dessay we could soon find a way to bring ye round to our way of thinkin’. We could stop your grub, for instance, and starve ye until you was willin’ to do what was wanted. And if that didn’t do, why there’s the—”
“Stop!” I exclaimed fiercely, “I have had enough, and more than enough, of threats, my man, and will listen to them no further. Now, understand me, all of you. I have stated the conditions upon which I will meet your wishes, and I will not abate one jot of them. Agree to them or not, as you please. You have taken the ship from me, and now you may do as you will with her; but, make no mistake, I will only help you of my own free will; I would rather kill the young lady and myself with my own hand than submit to compulsion from a crowd of mutineers. Take your own time to decide; I am in no hurry.”
“Why, he defies us!” exclaimed Price, turning to his companions. “What d’ye say, boys, shall we give him a lesson? Shall us show him that we’re his masters?”
“No, mate, we shan’t,” interposed the fellow who had spoken before; “and if you don’t stop your gab about ‘lessons’ and ‘masters’ I’ll see if I cawn’t stop it for you. What we want, mates, is to get to that island that O’Gorman has told us so much about; and here is a gent who can take us to it. What do we want more? Do we want to grub in the cabin? Ain’t the fo’k’sle good enough for us, who’ve lived in fo’k’sles all our lives? Very well, then, let’s agree to the gent’s terms, and have done with it. What d’ye s’y?”
It soon appeared that the entire party were willing—Price, however, consenting under protest;—so I retired to the cabin and drew up the terms in writing, together with an acknowledgment on the part of the crew that they had taken the ship from me by force, and that I was acting as navigator under compulsion; and this the entire party more or less reluctantly signed—or affixed their mark to—Miss Onslow acting as witness to the signatures of the men. This done, with bitter chagrin and profound misgiving as to the issue of the adventure, I gave the order to wear ship, and we bore up on a course that pointed the brig’s jib-boom straight for the far-distant Cape of Storms.
Chapter Nine.
We sight a strange sail.
Having secured possession of the brig, and succeeded in coercing me to become their navigator to some island in the Pacific, the locality of which they had as yet kept secret, upon an errand the nature of which they had not seen fit to divulge to me, the crew at once went industriously to work, under O’Gorman, to put the vessel all ataunto once more, by routing out and sending aloft spare topgallant-masts and yards, bending new sails, overhauling and making good the rigging, and, in short, repairing all damage of every description; and with such goodwill did they work that in ten days from the date of their seizure of the brig everything had been done that it was possible to do, and, so far as the outward appearance of the craft was concerned, there was nothing to show that anything had ever been wrong with her.