"Whew," whistled the doctor; "my dear sir, there is not a single cap on the nipples!"
"Bless me, you don't say so?" ejaculated poor Mr. Basset, who looked, what he really was, as little used to the handling of revolvers as to facing mutineers.
Heriot examined the six chambers, and found them all loaded; he capped the nipples, and gave the weapon to Mr. Basset, who concealed it again in the breast-pocket of his coat, and tried to assume a jaunty air, but failed.
"Now then, Mr. Basset, are you goin' to be all day of tumblin' up?" growled Bolter, stamping on the deck.
Mr. Basset gave a wistful glance at the door of his girls' sleeping-place, as the barricades of the cabin were secured, and then he ascended to the deck, with a heart that beat very fast indeed!
The dirty and disorderly state of the ship did not strike Mr. Basset's unprofessional eye, so much as the aspect of the crew impressed him, when he descended from the break of the quarter-deck, and walked forward to where Pedro Barradas was seated on the horizontal beam of the windlass, endeavouring to soothe himself by smoking, and in his rage half chewing the paper cigaritos, which his brother Zuares made for him; and close by was placed the uncorked brandy jar, which Bolter had carried forward, with a very triumphant expression.
Mr. Basset's heart sank, when he found himself among these squalid desperadoes, whose persons were now filthy in the extreme; their eyes were wild and wolfish in expression, their faces bloated, and obscured by sores and bruises; but still lower would his heart have sunk, had his eye detected the ominous noose that dangled at the weather-arm of the foreyard!
From his seat on the windlass, Pedro Barradas surveyed the poor gentleman, with wild black eyes, to which the glare of passionate hate and mental insanity, conduced by extreme bodily pain, imparted a terrible expression.
Enveloped in bloody bandages, his right arm hung powerless by his side. The fingers of the once strong hand seemed dead and livid now. His ear, which had been wounded by a pistol shot, was now a festering sore, amid which his coal black hair was matted; his bare brawny feet beat the deck with restless impatience, and spitting out to leeward the end of a paper cigarito, he showed all his white glistening teeth beneath his dark moustache, on the approach of Mr. Basset.
"Presto! come forward quick, you lubberly scribano," he roared out.