the Steeple Reef.--Awh,
you blidthirsty cowards! I wish I'd the pitchin' of every man of 'ee
overboards: 'tis precious little mercy you'd get from me. And the
blessed sawls to be caught in yer snarin' traps close into home,
anighst their very doors, too!--Eve, I must go and see what they means
to do for 'em. They'll never suffer to see 'em butchered whilst there's
a man in Polperro to go out and help 'em."

Forgetting in her terror all the difficulties she had before seen in
the path, Eve managed to keep up with Joan, whose flying footsteps
never stayed until she found herself in front of a long building close
under shelter of the Peak which had been named as a sort of
assembling-place in case of danger.

"'Tis they?" Joan called out in breathless agony, pushing her way
through the crowd of men now hastening up from all directions toward
the captain of the Cleopatra.

"I'm feared so;" and his grave face bespoke how fraught with anxiety
his fears were.

"What can it be, d'ee think?"

"Can't tell noways. They who brought us word saw the Hart sail, and
steady watch has been kept up, so that us knaws her ain't back."

"You manes to do somethin' for 'em?" said Joan.

"Never fear but us'll do what us can, though that's mighty little, I
can tell 'ee, Joan."

Joan gave an impatient groan. Her thorough comprehension of their
danger and its possible consequences lent activity to her distress,
while Eve, with nothing more tangible than the knowledge that a
terrible danger was near, seemed the prey to indefinite horrors which
took away from her every sense but the sense of suffering.

By this time the whole place was astir, people running to this point
and that, asking questions, listening to rumors, hazarding a hundred
conjectures, each more wild than the other. A couple of boats had been
manned, ready to row round by the cliff. One party had gone toward the
Warren, another to Yellow Rock. All were filled with the keenest desire
not only to aid their comrades, but to be revenged on those who had
snared them into this cunningly-devised pitfall. But amid all this zeal
arose the question, What could they do?

Absolutely nothing, for by this time the firing had ceased, the contest
was apparently over, and around them impenetrable darkness again
reigned supreme. To show any lights by which some point of land should
be discovered might only serve as a beacon to the enemy. To send out a
boat might be to run it into their ver