“Oh, no! no!” cried Joseph, trembling from head to foot; “me no like to go with dem. Dey kill me, sure!”
“Very well, then, don’t talk any more about gags, and such nonsense. If you do, I shall think you are mad, and I don’t want any madmen in this ship. Off with the main-hatch, men!” he added, turning to the two islanders at his elbow; “and move about lively, for we’ve lost time enough already.”
He was obeyed with alacrity, but the hold had scarcely been opened, when an exclamation of astonishment from the Kanakas drew the giant to the spot in time to inhale the gas, and to perceive the thin puffs of smoke that curled upward from the hatch.
With a loud oath, he leaped through the opening, and he then perceived the burning coal, and, also, that his two prisoners were gagged. To pass the heated furnace to the Kanakas, with an order to throw it overboard at once, was, with the mutineer, the work of an instant; then, lifting each of the two prostrate men, one after the other, in his herculean arms, he soon had them placed on deck.
“Now then!” he cried, as he climbed to the combings of the hatch, “take those gags from the mouths of the prisoners.”
The islanders obeyed, and, as soon as the sufferers had recovered sufficiently to speak, Lark addressed them:
“It was against my orders that you were served in the way you have been; for, although I owe you a grudge for disputing my authority, I wouldn’t go to work to satisfy it in any such sneaking manner as charcoal and gags, which ain’t in the vocabulary of equal rights. Who was the man that did this mischief? I wish to know, so that I can punish him.”
“Ay, ay!” cried Stump, for, thanks to an excellent constitution, both himself and his friend were rapidly recovering from the effects of the deadly carbon. “Ay, ay; that’s a square question, and desarves to be squarely answered. In the first place, then, you are parfectly correct when you say that the way we’ve been treated isn’t in the ‘vocalbubblery’ of equal rights. Them that has suffered as we have can be reasonably sartain upon that p’int, and I’ll say, in concluding, that, if I ever get hold of the head of Portuguese Joe—which was the creatur’ that caused all our woes—I shall give it a miraculous punching.”
The eyes of the giant flashed fire, and, rushing aft to the mizzen-mast, near which the steward had stationed himself, he caught the trembling wretch by the throat, and shook him until he was almost senseless.
“You miserable imp! Do you dare to go against the orders of Captain Lark? Do you dare to set my authority at defiance? Do you dare—”