ven
Gaunt could recover from his momentary surprise, the boats were fifty
yards away from the ship and heading for the shore, whilst the cries of
the hapless deserted girl rang fearfully out over the water after them.

The feeling of dismay naturally excited in the breasts of the
unfortunate passengers by this singular episode was of the briefest
possible duration, and was immediately succeeded by one of vexed
astonishment, that by what seemed like a cruel and inexcusably careless
oversight, a sensitive girl should have been subjected to even the most
temporary alarm; and whilst Mrs Henderson started to her feet with
clasped hands and wide-open startled eyes, Gaunt laid his hand on the
tiller, and jammed it hard over, as he exclaimed authoritatively:

"Back water, the starboard oars! pull, the port! round with her, men!
You have left Miss Stanhope behind!"

The men, looking surprisedly at each other, proceeded to obey the order,
upon which the new second-mate, who was in charge of the boat, started
to his feet, and prefacing the inquiry with an oath, demanded:

"Now then, you sodgers, what are you about? Who commands this here
boat? Give way, you swabs, and bend your backs to it, too, or there'll
be trouble for some of you when you gets back to the ship. It's all
right, sir," he continued, addressing Gaunt; "the young lady is to stay
where she is. It was all arranged by Williams and a few more of us
about half an hour ago, whilst you was all busy packing up your traps in
the cabin. The fact is like this here: None of us foremast hands
understands anything about navigation, so we've been obliged to press
young Ned into the sarvice; and we knows as how his heart ain't in the
job, and Williams sort of suspects that he'd play us a scurvy trick if
he dared. As long as you was with us he was all right, because, d'ye
see, Williams told him that if he played us false you'd be made to
suffer for it; but it suddenly struck him just now that when you was all
put ashore where should we be? So he and two or three more of us had a
palaver together, and the long and the short of it is that we decided to
keep the young woman with us as a `hostage,' Williams calls it, whereby
we shall keep the whip hand of the lad, as you may say. So all her
dunnage was passed down into the after-hold again on the quiet, and if
there's anything of hers in either of the boats we've got to take it
back aboard again. And Williams' very last ord