When it was over I turned round and fell upon the grass with a deep groan; but Bill seized me by the arm, and lifting me up as if I had been a child, cried,—
“Come along, lad; let’s away!”—and so, staggering and stumbling over the tangled underwood, we fled from the fatal spot.
During the remainder of that day I felt as if I were in a horrible dream. I scarce knew what was said to me, and was more than once blamed by the men for idling my time. At last the hour to return aboard came. We marched down to the beach, and I felt relief for the first time when my feet rested on the schooner’s deck.
In the course of the evening I overheard part of a conversation between the captain and the first mate, which startled me not a little. They were down in the cabin, and conversed in an under-tone, but the sky-light being off, I overheard every word that was said.
“I don’t half like it,” said the mate. “It seems to me that we’ll only have hard fightin’ and no pay.”
“No pay!” repeated the captain, in a voice of suppressed anger. “Do you call a good cargo all for nothing no pay?”
“Very true,” returned the mate; “but we’ve got the cargo aboard. Why not cut your cable and take French leave o’ them? What’s the use o’ tryin’ to lick the blackguards when it’ll do us no manner o’ good?”
“Mate,” said the captain, in a low voice, “you talk like a fresh-water sailor. I can only attribute this shyness to some strange delusion; for surely” (his voice assumed a slightly sneering tone as he said this) “surely I am not to suppose that you have become soft-hearted! Besides, you are wrong in regard to the cargo being aboard; there’s a good quarter of it lying in the woods, and that blackguard chief knows it and won’t let me take it off. He defied us to do our worst, yesterday.”
“Defied us! did he?” cried the mate, with a bitter laugh. “Poor contemptible thing!”
“And yet he seems not so contemptible but that you are afraid to attack him.”