There was a great length of cable out, for the water was so low that the ship could not have been hove to the anchor without danger.
"We'll make sailors of these Spanish lubbers before this voyage is over," I heard Lambourne say to Hislop, as they scrambled on board, and then the boat was hoisted in.
The evening sun was burning hot, and shed a red glare upon the green slime of the shallow sea, till it seemed to swelter in its heat, emitting an oppressive miasma that would have been deadly had we lingered long there.
The strange trees that fringed the shore were seen to toss their great cabbage-like leaves on the rising wind; but, as we speedily receded from the coast, they gradually lessened to the size of shrubs, and from shrubs to the size of little weeds, until they finally disappeared, when Warrang melted into the waves astern, as the San Ildefonso soon made a good offing and bore away to sea.
Our prisoners were now very effectually subdued.
More heavily ironed than the rest, Antonio sat ever silent and sullen, with his black-bearded chin sunk upon his breast; and frequently when it came to my turn to be posted as sentinel over him and the others in the cable tier, I could see, by the dim light of the horn lantern, which swung from the beam above (serving chiefly "to make the darkness visible"), his keen, fierce eyes fixed on me with a rattlesnake glare, which seemed to say, if a glance of hate and spite could kill, he would slay me.
After he became used to having his hands fettered, the old tindal of the Lascars was by far the most lively and conversable of the dingy gang, who all sat in a row, with their feet locked in the iron bilboes.
One day I gave this old fellow some wine and water, when he was almost sinking amid the stifling atmosphere of the den in which he was confined.
His gratitude was unbounded, and in a burst of confidence—which brought upon him the maledictions of the rest—he informed me in broken English (of which he had picked up a smattering during a voyage in one of our old Indiamen), that had the mutiny been successful, every one of us would have been made to walk the plank to leeward, and then the ship was to have been run ashore in some convenient creek, dismasted there, to conceal her from the seaward, and then to be completely plundered;—on the whole, unfolding a strange and incomprehensible project.
When he concluded, I smiled significantly, and tapped the butt of my loaded musket, as much as to say,—