"We don't owe you no grudge."
"We don't want your life. Just show us what to do—that's what it is."
I appeared to pay no attention to their remarks, but kept my eyes resolutely bent on Stevens, the carpenter, that they might see I accepted him as their mouthpiece, and would deal only with him.
"Well," he began, "all what you say is quite correct, and we've no fault to find with you. What I says to you this evenin' through the port-hole I says now—will you navigate this here wessel for us to the part as we've agreed on? and if you'll do that you can choose officers out of us, and we'll do your bidding as though you was lawful skipper, and trust to you. But I say now, and I says it before all hands here, that if you take us where we don't want to go, or put us in the way of any man-o'-war, or try in any manner to bring us to book for this here job, so help me, Mr. Royle, and that's your name, as mine is William Stevens, and I say it before all hands here, we'll sling you overboard as sartin as there's hair growin' on your head—we will; we'll murder you out an' out. All my mates is a followin' of me—so you'll please mind that!"
"I hear you," I replied, "and will do your bidding, but on this condition—that having killed the captain, you will swear to me that no more lives shall be sacrificed."
"By Gor, no!" shouted the cook. "Don't swear dat! Wait till by-um-by.
"Be advised by me!" I cried, seizing the fellow's frightful meaning, and dreading the hideous scene it portended. "We have an old man and a young girl on board. Are they safe?"
"Yes," answered several voices; and the cook jabbered, "Yes, yes!" with horrid contortions of the face, under the impression that I had mistaken his interruption.
"We have the steward and the chief mate?"
"Dat's dey! dat's dey!" screamed the cook. "No mercy upon 'em! Hab no mercy upon us! Him strike me on de jaw and kick me! T'oder one poison us! No mercy!" he howled, and several joined in the howl.