"By accident," I said; "and now I'm a prisoner here, like you."
"Oh, Jim," he cried, "what are they going to do to me? You must have heard them. What are they going to do to me? Will they kill me, Jim?"
I thought of the two coastguards snugly shut up in France, in one of the inns near Brest, living at free-quarters, till the smugglers thought they could be sure of them. When I thought of those two men I felt that the traitor would not be killed; and yet I was not sure. I believe they would have killed him if I had not been there. They were a very rough lot, living rough lives, and a traitor put them all in peril of the gallows. Smugglers were not merciful to traitors (it is said that they once tied a traitor to a post at low-water mark, and let the tide drown him), and Marah's words made me feel that Mr Cottier would suffer some punishment: not death, perhaps, but something terrible.
I tried to reassure the man, but I could say very little. And I was angry with him, for he never asked after his wife, nor after Hugh, his son: and he asked me nothing of my prospects. The thought of his possible death by violence within the next few hours kept him from all thought of other people. Do not blame him. We who have not been tried do not know how we should behave in similar circumstances.
By-and-by the men came back to us. We were led downstairs, and put aboard the lugger. Then the boat pushed off silently, sail was hoisted, and a course was set down channel, under a press of canvas. Mr Cottier cheered up when we had passed out of the sight of the lights of the shore, for he knew then that his life was to be spared. His natural bullying vein came back to him. He sang and joked, and even threatened his captors. So all that night we sailed, and all the next day and night—a wild two or three days' sailing, with spray flying over us, and no really dry or warm place to sleep in, save a little half-deck which they rigged in the bows.
I should have been very miserable had not Marah made me work with the men, hauling the ropes, swabbing down the decks, scrubbing the paintwork, and even bearing a hand at the tiller. The work kept me from thinking. The watches (four hours on, four hours off), which I had to keep like the other men, made the time pass rapidly; for the days slid into each other, and the nights, broken into as they were by the night-watches, seemed all too short for a sleepy head like mine.
Towards the end of the passage, when the weather had grown brighter and hotter, I began to wonder how much further we were going. Then, one morning, I woke up to find the lugger at anchor in one of the ports of Northern Spain, with dawn just breaking over the olive-trees, and one or two large, queer-looking, lateen-rigged boats, xebecs from Africa, lying close to us. One of them was flying a red flag, and I noticed that our own boat was alongside of her. I thought nothing of it, but drew a little water from the scuttle-butt, and washed my face and hands in one of the buckets. One or two of the men were talking at my side.
"Ah!" said one of them, "that's nine he did that way—nine, counting him."
"A good job, too," said another man. "It's us or them. I'd rather it was them."
"Yes," said another fellow; "and I guess they repent."