"Good night! God bless you both, darlings," said Mr. Basset.
"Sleep if you can, dear girls," added Morley, as he and Mr. Basset picked their way through the cabin by the light of a candle (which feebly replaced the lamp that whilom swung from the beams), and joined the party who were on watch under Captain Phillips, while Tom Bartelot, with his three—for there were only eight men in all in the cabin now, opposed to twenty, including Hawkshaw—prepared to sleep while they could.
They heard the starboard tacks eased off, as the wind—the south-west monsoon—came more duly aft; and steering by the stars, Pedro, a skilful mariner, kept the ship he had captured in the course he wished her to pursue.
So, as the night stole on, a strange quiet reigned on deck—a silence which seemed almost ominous, when the characters and purpose of those who held the ship were considered; and they were more numerous now, since the death of the first mate and the steward.
But the actual reason of the extreme quietness was, that some of the crew were weary with working at the jury rigging; others had dozed themselves off to sleep, quite intoxicated, with some cases of Cliquot which they had started out of the forehold; there was scarcely any watch on deck save the man at the wheel, who permitted the ship to yaw fearfully, and to fall away from her course every moment; while the two Barradas, with Badger and Sharkey, were in the forecastle, devising means to get possession of the cabin by stratagem, and to massacre its male occupants, against whom, for their skilful resistance, these pirates cherished a glow of real vengeance, as if a wrong had been done them; and if those in the cabin had but known the state of matters on deck, they might have recaptured the ship with ease, and closed the fore-scuttle like a trap on the ruffians below.
Captain Phillips was certain that they could scarcely pass through the Mozambique Channel, the narrowest part of which is about two hundred and forty miles wide, and studded with many islands, without being overhauled by some homeward-bound ship; and though one great chance of succour had gone for nothing, so assured did he feel of ultimately getting the mutineers punished, that he kept about his own person the muster-roll—a document which every shipmaster must keep, for therein are specified his own name, with the names of all his ship's company, their birth-places, with their time and place of entering before the mast, and so forth, together with their register-tickets—all of which he duly hoped to lay at a future day before a commissioned officer in Her Majesty's service, or some civil magistrate, prior to seeing the Barradas and their companions swinging at the yard-arm; but, unhappily for worthy Captain Phillips and his friends, all these hopes of retribution seemed very dim and distant yet.
Slowly the night stole on.
Morley felt, he knew not why, painfully wakeful; and, unlike his companions in the captain's watch, he had no necessity to pinch his arms, rub his eyes, or so forth, to keep as much awake as possible.
The cabin looked dreary and desolate by the feeble light of the candle, which sputtered in the wind that came between the skylight and the sail which still covered it. The broken furniture, the splintered panelling, the general air of wreck and ruin that pervaded it, the deep shadows against which the pale and haggard faces of his companions, who slept with weapon in hand, were sharply defined, seemed like a vision or dream altogether, and such he might almost have deemed it, but for the steady rolling of the ship, which was now running before the wind; the noise of the water under the counter; the clatter of the empty champagne bottles which strewed the deck, and with every roll of the ship flew, clashing and breaking, from port to starboard; the clank of the rudder in its iron bands, the whistling hum of the night-wind, that sung monotonously through the rigging aloft!
He frequently turned his eyes to the dim streak of light that shone from under the door of the little cabin occupied by the sisters, and hoped that now, in the oblivion of sleep, they had found repose for a time; and in imagination he saw their sweet faces hushed upon the same pillow, with Rose's nestling in Ethel's gentle bosom.