the lesser gate, their "All's well!" made us
glad men indeed. In spite of it all, one of us, at least, I witness,
could tell himself, "It is possible--by Heaven, it is possible--that we
shall see the day!" That we had beaten off the first attack was not to
be doubted. Wherever the mutineers had gone to, they no longer rowed in
the loom of the gate. And yet I knew that the time must be short; day
would not serve them nor the morning light. The dark must decide it.

"They will come again, Peter, and it will be before the dawn," said I,
when one thing and another had been mentioned and no word of their
misfortune. "It's beyond expectation to suppose anything else. If this
house is to be taken, they must take it in the dark. And more than
that, lads," said I, "it was a foolish thing for us to go among
them as we did and to fight it out down yonder. We are safer in the
turret--safer, by a long way!"

"I thought so all the time, sir," answered Dolly Venn, wisely. "They
can never get below if you cover the door; and I can keep the sea. It's
lucky Czerny loopholed this place, anyway. If ever I meet him I shall
quote poetry: 'He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel.' It would
about make him mad, captain!"

"Aye," says Peter Bligh, "poetry is well enough, as my poor old father
used to say; but poetry never reefed a to'gallon sail in a hurricane
and isn't going to begin this night. It's thick heads you need, lad,
and good, sound sense inside of 'em! As for what the captain says, I do
hold it, truly. But, Lord! I'm like a boy at a fair when the crowns are
cracking, and angels themselves wouldn't keep me back!"

"You'd affright them, Mister Bligh," puts in, Seth Barker, "you'd
affright them--asking your pardon--with your landgwich!"

"What!" cries Peter, as though in amazement; "did I say things that
oughtn't to be said? Well, you surprise me, Barker, you do surprise
me!"

Well, I was glad to hear them talk like this, for jest is better than
the coward's "if"; and men who can face death with a laugh will win
life before your craven any day. But for the prone figures on the
rock, looking up with their sightless eyes, or huddled in cleft and
cranny--but for them, I say, and distant voices on the sea, and the
black shape of Ken's Island, we four might have been merry comrades in
a ship's cabin, smoking a pipe in the morning watch and looking gladly
for dawn and a welcome shore. That this content could long endure was,
beyo