“Two of you help my brother into the boat,” he ordered. He was at once obeyed, and Ned Rodman was passed over the side into the hands of the man in the boat.
“Put out every light on deck and aloft,” was his next command, and this was done by the watch without delay; for there was in Rodman's face such a look of savage determination that they dared not think of refusing. Then he ordered them into the sail-locker.
“Now, Mr. Waller,” he said, addressing the carpenter, “we don't want to hurt you and these three men with you. But we are desperate, and bent on a desperate course. Still, if you don't want to get shot, do as I tell you. Get into that sail-locker and lie low. Mr. Newman and the cooper and the steward are already disposed of. And I'm going to put it out of the power of Captain 'Brute' Lucy to get me and those with me into his hands again.”
“You won't shut us up in the sail-locker and scuttle the ship and let us drown, will you?” asked the carpenter.
“No; I'm no murderer, unless you make me one. If there is any one I have a grudge against it is Mr. Newman and the cooper; but I won't do more to the cooper than I have already done. Still I'm not going to leave the ship in your hands until I have messed her up a bit. So away with you into the locker, and let us get to work.”
Then, with the man from the boat, the carpenter and his companions were pushed into the sail-locker and the door securely fastened. Looking down from the skylight into the cabin Rodman saw that the cooper had not yet come to, and therefore no danger need be apprehended from him. Sending Wray below, the rifles, ammunition, and nautical instruments were passed up on deck and handed down into the boat. Then, leaving Porter on guard to watch the cooper, Rodman and the others went for'ard with a couple of axes and slashed away at the standing fore-rigging on both sides; they then cut half-way through the foremast, so that the slightest puff of wind, when it came, would send it over the side. Then, going for'ard, they cut through the head stays.
“That will do,” said the boat-steerer, flinging down his axe; and then walking to the waist he hailed the boat:
“Are you all right, Ned?”
“Yes,” answered the youth, “but hurry up, Jerry, I think a breeze is coming.”
Running aft, the elder brother sprang up the poop ladder and looked down through the skylight into the cabin. “Cut Mr. Newman and the steward adrift,” he said to Wray.