Lambourne ventured to peep down the skylight, when he saw Antonio drinking brandy from a case-bottle, without troubling himself with a glass. Then the Spaniard proceeded to attire himself in the best clothes of Captain Weston; he forced open several lockfast places, and took from them money and jewelry, which he concealed about his person. What his ultimate object could be in performing these acts of plunder on the open sea, we could neither conceive nor divine, but on chancing to glance upward, he caught a glimpse of Tom's eyes peering down.
There was an explosion, a crashing of glass, and a ball from a revolver, fired upward, grazed Tom's left ear and pierced the rim of his sou'-wester as a hint that our Cubano had no intention of being overlooked in his operations below.
We heard him close the cabin door with a bang, and after locking it, throw himself on the floor behind it, with the intention of sleeping probably, but with the full resolution that no one should enter without disturbing him; and in this way, after examining his pistols, he reposed every night afterwards while on board.
"By jingo! I thought the killing o' them birds would lead to bad luck somehow," said Henry Warren, an old foremast man, with a reproachful glance at me, as he threw the two albatrosses overboard.
We now held a solemn conference to meet the emergency which was certain to come anon, and to consider the best means of subduing and disarming the culprit.
"Whoever goes nigh him in the cabin, either by the door or the skylight, risks being stabbed or shot," said Tattooed Tom; "so we must go to work some other way, shipmates, and that other way must be considered."
"We might close and batten the skylight and companion, and then starve or smoke him out," suggested one of the crew, Francis Probart, our carpenter.
"Smoke him out?" echoed Tom.
"Yes, as we do rats."
"By what?"