"Water!—water, mate, for the love of God!"
"And how do you know," cries Peter back to them, "how do you know that we've water for ourselves?"
"Why, Barebones saw to that," says one of them, no doubt meaning Czerny thereby; "Barebones saw to that, though precious little of it the lubber drank!"
"He's off, is Barebones," says another; "oh, trust Barebones! Bones-and-Biscuits puts to sea last night, 'cause he's a duty to perform in 'Frisco, he 'as. Trust Bones-and-Biscuits to turn up righteous when the trumpet blows!"
And another, said he:
"I wish I had his black head under my boot this minute! My mouth's all sand and my throat is stuck! Aye, mates," says he, "you'll moisten my poor tongue—same as is wrote in the Scriptures!"
There were other entreaties; some of them spoke to us in French, the most part in German. Of the boats that were left, two had rowed away for the lesser gate, but five drifted about our rock and drew so close that we could have tossed a biscuit to them. Never have I seen a crowd of faces more repulsive or jowls so repellent. Iron-limbed men, fat Germans, sleek Frenchmen, Greeks, niggers, some armed with rifles, some with fearsome knives, they squatted all together in the open boats and roared together for pity and release. Then, for the first time, I was able to see how cruelly Czerny's gun had dealt with them in the darkness of the night. It was horrible to see the bloody limbs, the open wounds, the matted hair, the gaping faces of these creatures of a desperado's mad ambition. The boats themselves were splintered and hacked as though heavy hatches had beaten them. I could wonder no longer that they called the truce; and yet, knowing why they called it, what was I to do? Let them set foot on the plateau, and we, but a handful at the best, might be swept into the sea like flies from a wall. I say that I was at my wits' end. Every merciful instinct urged me to give them water; every prudent voice cried, "Beat them off."
"If there's fight in that lot, I'm as black as yonder nigger!" said Peter Bligh, when he looked at them a little while, very contemptuously. "Not a kick to-day among the lot of them, by Jericho! But you cannot give them water, captain," he goes on, "for you've little to give."
Clair-de-Lune, thinking deeper, was, nevertheless, for a stem refusal.
"Keep them off, captain, that's my advice," says he. "They very desperate, dangerous men. They drink water, then cut throat. Make ear deaf and say cistern all empty. They think you die, and they wait, but come aboard—no, by thunder!"