“We are grateful for the leniency with which we have been treated, but may I ask what the captain intends doing with us?” I said.
“Why, I suppose that he intends to sell you two young gentlemen as slaves in the Brazils. He will give your faces and bodies a coating of black, and put you with the rest of the negroes,” answered the mate. “And as for you,” he exclaimed, turning to Tubbs, “you might have been treated as a deserter; and if you don’t sign articles and join us, you will probably have to walk the plank. I say this as a hint to you. If you act wisely, you’ll be set at liberty as soon as we get into blue water.”
“You reckon wrongly if you think I’ll join this craft or any other like her,” answered Tubbs stoutly. “I’m ready to take the consequences, for turn pirate I won’t; so you have my answer.”
The mate laughed.
“Many a fine fellow has said that and changed his tone when he has seen the plank rigged or the yard-arm with a running bowline from it. However, I must not waste words on you. I’ll send you down your suppers, and you must manage to stow yourselves away in the best manner you can think of for sleep. One of you must needs sit up, and he’ll have plenty to do in keeping off the rats and cockroaches, for you’ll be somewhat troubled by them, I suspect.”
We thanked the mate for the promise of sending us some supper, and wished him good-night; and I really believe that, as far as his brutalised nature would allow, he intended to be kind to us. Cramped as we were in the hot stifling hold, it was a long time before any one of us could go to sleep. We were, I should have said, left in total darkness; not the slightest gleam of light descending into the part of the hold in which we were confined. At length I was awakened from a tolerable sleep by a noise which betokened that the ship was getting under weigh. I did not like to arouse my companions; but Tubbs, who had been sitting on a locker, started up exclaiming—
“Ay, ay! I’ll be on deck in a twinkling.” The blow he gave his head against the beam above him, roused him up. “Bless my heart! I forgot where I was,” he said. “Yes, the ship’s under weigh, no doubt about that, and we shall be out at sea in the course of a few hours if we have the tide and wind with us, and don’t ground on the bar and get knocked to pieces.”
After some time Harry awoke. I told him that the ship was running down the river.
“Our chance of escape for the present is over, then,” he said with a deep sigh.
He had naturally been thinking of home and Lucy and his blighted prospects; so indeed had I. Tubbs, as before, tried to cheer us up by talking on various subjects.