"Mean to hang you, eh? Yes, but we do," grinned Pedro.
"Yaas—yaas, Massa Basset, we'll make you dance ebber so 'igh," added Quaco, with a yelling laugh.
"Silence, you black devil," roared Pedro, gnashing his teeth; "who gave you leave to speak here. Away to the caboose, and look after your coppers. Yes, Mr. Basset, we mean to hang you unless Dr. Heriot will come forward and dress my wounded arm. And more than that—unless your two girls come forward here among us, to ransom you. Do you understand all that, eh?"
Mute with fear, and the awful dread of impending death, and such a death—feeling all the futility of seeking mercy from the merciless—the unhappy Mr. Basset stood in a cold sweat before this demon of a man. He had but one idea prominent amid the chaos of his thoughts, that never more would he look upon the faces of his children.
"Pass the word aft that the rope is knotted and rove," said the inexorable Pedro.
Badger ascended the break of the quarter-deck, and peeping down the skylight, said:
"You below thar?"
"Well—hallo—what do you want?" asked Captain Phillips.
"Jest to say, friends, as Captain Barradas will string your precious judge up to the arm of the fore-yard in a brace o' shakes, if yew, Dr. Heriot, don't come forward and dress his wounded arm" (at these words, the proposal he heard of chaining him to the mast, flashed upon Heriot's memory), "and if yew all don't give up the tew gals you reckon on keeping for yourselves. If yew understand all that, yew had better be quick, yew had."
"Be off, you rascally Yankee, or I'll mar your seamanship!" said Captain Phillips.