“I—I—give you ’em quick,” gasped Joseph, while his eyes fairly rolled in his head with terror.
“Here—here,” he added, pulling the required instruments from his pocket—“here dey be, and now you no kill me!”
In order to receive the keys, the shipkeeper let go of the steward’s throat, and his joy was so great when the articles were in his hands, that for a moment, while contemplating them, he almost forgot the presence of the mutineer.
The latter was not slow to take advantage of this circumstance. He bounded up the companion-way, and disappeared, before Stump could lift his pistol.
“Ay, ay—the rascal’s gone, sure enough!” cried the shipkeeper, in a tone of mortification, “and it’s l’arned me a lesson, which is, that them that doesn’t keep their eyes squinted both ways, or that allows their pleasures to turn ’em aside from their duties, is bound to suffer for it in the end.”
“Never mind,” said Marline, who had risen, and was looking through the open hatchway; “but, come quick and unlock these handcuffs. That fellow, I can even hear now giving the alarm on deck, and the sooner my arms are at liberty, the better will it be for us both!”
“There’s plenty of truth in that,” replied the shipkeeper, as he now set himself to work to unfasten the irons from his friend’s wrists, “plenty of truth in that, and—”
“How! Why! A thousand devils! What does this mean?” interrupted the voice of Tom Lark, at this juncture. “Ho! halloa there—on deck!”
“That rascal has come to, at last!” cried Stump, “and, although it consoles me to think that I didn’t kill a fellow creatur’, there isn’t music enough in that voice—which is something atween the roar of a bull and the grunting of sea-hog—to give any pleasure.”
Marline’s handcuffs dropped clanking to the deck, as his chum spoke, and the young man sprung lightly from the run. The shipkeeper secured the trap above the hatch, while the other, rushing up the companion-way, fastened the door leading to it, by hooking it on the inside.