“Do you intend that we shall spend four and twenty hours here alone, with nothing to eat?”
“It isn’t anything I can help, lad. I’ll speak to the bo’sun about it, if I get the chance.”
Then he freed himself from my grasp and was gone, leaving Simon and me gazing discontentedly into each other’s eyes.
Lest he who chances to read these lines should be brought to think that Simon Ropes and I were babies, who could not remain on duty twelve hours at a stretch without weeping and wailing over it, let me call attention to the general situation, which was sufficient to take the heart out of lads far stronger than we two.
Had it been necessary for us to stand guard four and twenty hours, or even twice that length of time on a stretch, because we were in pursuit of an enemy, the labour would have seemed as nothing. Or, had any ordinary event in a sailorman’s life rendered it important that we should perform even a more laborious task, not a word of complaint would have been heard from our lips.
It was the nameless dread which had come upon us since the evening previous; the haunting fear that one of the prisoners was lying in wait to make a sudden attack; the possibility that the men might rise in mutiny,—it was all these which rendered us timid and peevish.
We gave way to terror unnecessarily at this particular time, however, for Tim Stubbs had hardly more than left us before two old shellbacks came down to relieve us, stipulating, as we hastened toward the ladder in our eagerness to breathe the fresh air once more, that we should bring them news of the chase from time to time.
“We’ll keep you posted,” I cried, “and you in turn are to be on the alert every instant. Have your muskets where they may be come at handily, and be quick at facing about in case you hear any unusual noise from behind.”
Some of the prisoners looked at me oddly as I gave this advice, which was as near as I cared to come at revealing what I believed to be the true state of affairs, and one of the sailors asked: