. Then they held a sort of court. Man after man got up
and said that I had been drawing them on to find out what they were up
to, and had agreed to join them, of course with the intention of getting
them caught in the act, and two got up and said that they knew me as one
of the runners. They all agreed that I must be put out of the way.

"I suppose, as the landlord did not want blood spilt in his house, they
did not knife me at once; however, they told me that they had decided
that as soon as the coast was clear I should be carried down to the
river, and chucked in, with an old anchor tied to my neck. I had just
a gleam of hope a short time before you came in, for then it had been
settled that it was just as well no more should be engaged in the affair
than was necessary, and that Black Jim, with two others, whom I had
been talking to, and the two men who had told them that I was a runner,
should manage it, and the rest were to go off to their homes.

"I had been all the time trying to loosen my ropes, and had got one of
my hands nearly free, and I thought that if they waited another half
hour I might have got them both free, and been able to make a bit of a
fight of it, though I had very little hope of getting my legs free.

"However, I had my eye on the knife of the man who was sitting next to
me, and who was one of those who was to stay. I thought that if I had my
hands free, I could snatch his knife, settle him, and then cut the ropes
from my legs; that done, I could, I think, have managed Black Jim and
the others. As for the men who denounced me, they were small men, and I
had no fear of them in a fight, unless; as I thought likely enough, they
might have pistols. One of them is the fellow whose jaw I broke; I hit
him hard, for he had a pistol in his hand."

"There is no doubt you hit him hard," Gibbons said dryly. "He looked a
better sort than the rest."

"Yes, the fellow was a card sharper whom I once detected at cheating;
and so was the one who was lying next to him, the man whom you said you
thought was shamming."

By this time the men's wounds were all bandaged up. Mark told them that
he would be round there again in the morning, and hoped that they would
all be there.

"I shall go home at once, and turn in," he said. "Straining at those
cords has taken the skin off my wrists, and I feel stiff all over; it
will be a day or two, Gibbons, before I am able to put the gloves on
again. I wish I could find th