"Captain Dove wants you in a hurry, Jasper," she said, and he went below in his turn, not altogether unwillingly.
As he disappeared behind her, she glanced down at the main-deck alive with armed men, as evil-looking a crowd as could be recruited from the purlieus of Hell's Kitchen or crimped from the Hole-in-the-Wall. The flush on her face died away.
"What are they waiting for, Rube?" she whispered to the big man at the top of the steps, whose steady glance seemed to have such a repressive effect on them.
"Sunset, I suppose," he answered in a low tone. "If no one crosses them, they'll maybe wait till it's dark before they begin. Better go below again, Sallie."
She shook her head and said "No," aloud, since he was not looking at her. And he did not urge that precaution. The sun was already nearing the steamy horizon.
The sullen, lowering looks of the ill-favoured assemblage about the hatch foretold the fate which threatened her and him.
"But they won't shoot you, Sallie," he said, giving voice to his only fear in a shaky whisper, his soul in his honest eyes as he glanced wretchedly round at her.
She laid a clenched hand on the rail and opened it slightly. "Don't worry about me, Rube," she whispered back, very matter of fact, while he gazed as if fascinated at the thin blue phial, with its red danger-label, resting in her rosy palm. "I always carry a key that will unlock the last gate of all. So there's no need to worry about me. I just wish you'd say you forgive me all the trouble I've brought on you."
"There's nothing to forgive, lass," he asserted stolidly, and, looking away again as though her appealing regard had hurt him, was taken with a gulping in the throat.
Two or three of the mutineers had begun to knock loose the wedges securing the tarpaulin cover of the after-hatch, through which alone access to the ship's magazine was to be had.