We were sitting in silence when a voice broke upon us.
"Is there an officer down there?" it questioned. "I hear that one of you is an officer."
"Yes," said Sutton, "there is."
Then he whispered to me, placing one hand on my shoulder, "Speak up, lad; it will do no harm to play it so, and you may get a chance to speak to some one higher than these hulk-scuttlers. Make a plea for Mackie, if you can, or the boy will die down here in this rat-hole."
So I stood up on my feet, and gazing up at the circle of light through which came the cable, I said, loudly, "What do you want of me?"
For an instant I thought that I was going to be made the victim of a joke, as the man did not reply, but talked to some one evidently standing over him.
"Yes, sir," he said, "there's an officer, a midshipman, I dare say, down there with them."
In a few minutes we heard the drawing of the heavy bolts that held the door through the bulkhead into the mid-hold, and some one said, "Let that young man who spoke come here."
I stepped out. The door was closed behind me, and I saw it was guarded by two marines with muskets. Stumbling over barrels and boxes, I followed the three figures ahead of me up the ladder at an order from one of them, and soon I found myself on the berth-deck. We were evidently crowding on all sail, for the frigate heeled over to such an angle that the half-ports had been closed for comfort, but the water dashed in through several rents in her top sides. A shiver passed over me, for the idea suddenly came that I was going to be hanged or thrown overboard, and this was emphasized by the sight I caught of four sailors carrying a limp dead Englishman up from the cockpit—that he had died under the surgeon's knife was evident.
From the deck above came the sound of shouting and hurrying. The frigate came up into the wind, that must have freshened, and swung off on the other tack. As soon as this had occurred, I noticed that some one was coming down the ladder near where I stood. As he stooped under a beam and approached us, I perceived that the man was in a handsome uniform, with great epaulets and much gilt braid.