"I am sure you will. My wish is to save you—not my wish only—it is my resolution. Trust in me wholly, Miss Robertson. Keep up your courage, for I may want you to help me at the last."
"You must trust in me, too, as my whole trust is in you," she answered, smiling.
I smiled back at her, and said—
"Now, let me tell you what may happen—what all my energies are and have been engaged to bring about. On Friday afternoon I shall tell the carpenter that the ship is fifty or sixty miles off the coast of Florida. If the night is calm—and I pray that it may be—the ship will be hove to, that is, rendered stationary on the water; the long-boat will be slung over the side, and the quarter-boat lowered. All this is certain to happen. But now come my doubts. Will the crew remain on board until the man they send into the hold to scuttle the vessel rejoins them? or will they get into the boats and wait for him alongside? If they take to the boats and wait for the man, the ship is ours. If they remain on board, then our preservation will depend upon the bo'sun."
"How?"
"He will either kill the man who gets into the hold, or knock him insensible. He will then have to act as though he were the man he has knocked on the head."
"I see."
"If they call to him, he will have to answer them without showing himself. Perhaps he will call to them. They will answer him. They will necessarily muffle their voices that we who are aft may not suspect what they are about. In that case the bo'sun may counterfeit the voice of the man he has knocked on the head successfully."
"But what will he tell them?"
"Why, that his job is nearly finished, and that they had best take to the boats and hold off for him, as he is scuttling her in half a dozen places, and the people aft will find her sinking and make a rush to the boats if they are not kept away. He will tell them that when he has done scuttling her, he will run up and jump overboard and swim to them. This, if done cleverly, may decide the men to shove off. We shall see."