"You don't know!" he exclaimed. "You don't know! Do you mean we're just to give in, and be murdered, one after another?"
"We've done all we can," I replied. "I don't know what else we can do, unless we go below and lock ourselves in, every night."
"That would be better than this," he said. "There'll be no one to go below, or anything else, soon!"
"But what if it came on to blow?" I asked. "We'd be having the sticks blown out of her."
"What if it came on to blow now?" he returned. "No one would go aloft, if it were dark, you said, yourself! Besides, we could shorten her right down, first. I tell you, in a few days there won't be a chap alive aboard this packet unless they jolly well do something!"
"Don't shout," I warned him. "You'll have the Old Man hearing you." But the young beggar was wound up, and would take no notice.
"I will shout," he replied. "I want the Old Man to hear. I've a good mind to go up and tell him."
He started on a fresh tack.
"Why don't the men do something?" he began. "They ought to damn well make the Old Man put us into port! They ought—"
"For goodness sake, shut up, you little fool!" I said. "What's the good of talking a lot of damned rot like that? You'll be getting yourself into trouble."