She gazed kindly and inquiringly into his pale and agitated face, for his present wretched and guilty aspect astonished and perplexed her.
Her colour, always so delicate, was somewhat heightened beyond its usual roseleaf tint, by the late excitement, and, as we have said, Hawkshaw, with all his selfishness, with all his guilt and bloodthirstiness, thought he never beheld her looking so lovely and so pure as at this, to him, most terrible time.
She was about to speak, when several footsteps were heard coming towards the great cabin, on which she retired hastily to her own, and shut the door.
"Oh, my God! they are coming to denounce me! Peril—disgrace—ruin, and no escape but death!" groaned Hawkshaw, covering his eyes with one hand, while the other fell, by chance—or was it fatality!—on the cold butt of the loaded revolver.
CHAPTER XVII.
UNMASKED.
The time spent by the captain and his companions in the place where the four castaways were located must have appeared interminable to the wretched Hawkshaw, as they remained there fully an hour, for much had to be inquired into, and much more related and explained.
Resolved to question, cross-question, sift, and refine, and all unconscious of the surprise that was awaiting him, Mr. Basset, with tolerable lawyer-like activity and importance, fussily followed jolly Captain Phillips, who had one hand stuffed into that pocket of his pea-jacket which held his revolver, and in the other hand he swung a ship's lantern.
To Mr. Basset's unpractised eye, the 'tween decks seemed rather a dreary den, to say the best of it. It was lower in height, or, to write more correctly, between beams, than the ship's cabin, and its furniture was exceedingly simple, consisting only of a small breaker or gang-cask, and wooden drinking tot, set upon a sea-chest which was securely lashed to the bulkhead, while a railway rug and poncho wrapper lay thereby.
Then his eye caught four queer-looking long bags, that swung by clews and cleats from the beams longitudinally, and ont of each of the aforesaid bags a human face was peering, with eyes expressive of inquiry and interest; but their features could not be discerned, for all was darkness, or nearly so, except where the light of the lantern fell.