"No."
"He's agoin' to be massa capting."
"What?"
"He's agoin' to trim de ship by de starn, he is. Jolly, ain't it! But there will be no loblolly boys allowed to skulk 'tween decks arter dat—by golly! no," and, grinning away like an ogre, with his yellow eyeballs gleaming, his white teeth and angular cheek-bones shining, Quaco retired with the greasy wooden mess-kid on which he had brought Hawkshaw some hot lobscouse.
Quaco's words made his heart beat faster, and set him to think deeply, and with indescribable agitation.
The proposed seizure of the ship was again upon the tapis.
Should he acquaint Captain Phillips of it; but perhaps he knew of it already more fully, and was quite prepared.
By his silence, Ethel might be destroyed; by speaking in time, she might be saved; but only saved for Morley Ashton. Damning thought! The first impulse made him start to his feet, to summon Joe; the second made him sink back sullenly on the sea-chest again.
To join those in the cabin was but to serve Morley Ashton and those who loathed him; to league with the mutineers, whom he dreaded, was but to sink deeper in disgrace and more hopelessly into crime.
On shore, he would have gladly fled from them all; but in that floating prison, the Hermione, he had but one resource left—to join the crew—if he would save his own life. He felt himself helplessly at the mercy of the Barradas; and, by joining them in the scuffle or conflict that must precede the capture of the ship, he might find a fair means of putting a period to Morley Ashton's existence, if some one else did not anticipate him. Morley he hated with a tiger-like emotion—a mingled dread and aversion.