“ ‘You’re wrong,’ said I, ‘they’re swimming off to the shore to fill their stomachs with something green, if they can find it. They’ll be back presently, and then, if you cover the hatchways, you can call all hands to a rat-hunt.’
“The carpenter looked at me, and then at the poop, significantly enough; a look of intelligence suddenly crossed his blank, weather-beaten face, as he moved close to my side, with his hand to his mouth and his eye still fixed aft: ‘Do you know, sir,’ he whispered, bending his brows and looking me hard in the face, ‘do you know who are your shipmates in this here craft?’
“At that moment the captain called out in his deep, calm voice, and I went up on the poop, where, pointing to the frigate, which lay now within half a pistol shot of us, outside of the passage, he put the glass in my hands, without saying a word. The first look I took through the instrument explained his meaning. The frigate’s starboard broadside was sprung to bear on us, and the long tiers of guns frowning full upon the ship. They were even lighting their battle-lanterns, and groups of turbans and pointed caps were visible in every part of the upper deck.
“I dropped the glass from my eye and looked at my companion.
“ ‘I understand it,’ said he composedly, in reply to my look—‘wait a couple of hours longer, and the scene will change. In the meantime come below, and let us have a glass of grog.’
“He swept the harbor carefully with his glass, dwelling some time on the landing-place, which is at the mouth of a drain, or sort of canal; the town itself being hidden from our sight by the lofty castle-crowned crags to the north and east. The Soliman Shah, after changing her old berth, had anchored off Fisher’s rock, a small islet lying off the north point of Muscat Island.
While Catherton was thus engaged, the thought of what Halil and the rest of the conspirators could be doing at that moment, together with my adventures that night, whirled a confused crowd of images before my mind, in the midst of which black Hadji’s face was preëminent. The stories which I had heard of his craft and cruelty occurred to me so strongly that it was a relief when the captain closed his glass with a snap, and led the way to the cabin.
“ ‘Steward,’ said he to the mulatto, who seemed to make it a rule never to be caught in his hammock when his master was up, ‘set out the liquor-case, and a bottle of that old Bourbon whisky we got out of the Frenchman—and then be off to your roost.’
The fellow obeyed in his usual deferential way, and placing a lighted joshstick and a bundle of sheroots on the table withdrew.
“ ‘To-morrow,’ said Catherton, ‘we’ll tow out into the bight of the current, go how things may; and here,’ he added, pouring out a tumbler of grog, and pushing me the bottle, ‘here’s good-bye, forever and a day, to the key of the Persian Gulf.’