e, but the wind had drawn more out
from the southward until it was square upon our starboard beam, which,
with a decided increase in its strength, had caused us to take in all
our studding-sails except the fore-topmast, the boom of which was braced
well forward. It was close upon sunset; and Harry, the Cockney, was at
the wheel. The sky away to the westward about the setting sun wore a
decidedly smoky, windy look, with a corresponding wildness and hardness
and glare of colour that seemed to threaten a blusterous night; so much
so, indeed, that, pausing in my solitary perambulation of the deck, I
halted near the binnacle to study it. As I did so, the helmsman, with
his eye on the weather leach of the main-topgallant-sail, said:

"Don't look at me, or take any notice of me, sir, because I don't want
them skowbanks for'ard to see me a-talkin' to you; but I've got
somethin' very partic'lar as I should like to s'y, if I can only find a
chaunce."

"Well, fire away then, my lad," said I. "No time like the present. I
am looking to see whether we are going to have a breeze to-night."

The fellow remained silent for a full minute, chewing vigorously at the
plug of tobacco in his cheek, and then said, still gazing intently
aloft:

"The long and the short of it's this, sir. Them two swines, O'Gorman
and Price, have been s'yin' that after that business with the French
barque, and the shootin' of Karl and Fritz, it won't never do to let you
and the young lidy ever get ashore again."

So Miss Onslow's foreboding had come true, then! We knew too much, and
were no doubt to be sacrificed in cold blood to ensure the safety of
this piratical gang. But "fore-warned is fore-armed"; moreover, there
was this man Harry clearly disposed to be friendly to us, or why should
he take the risk of acquainting me with this terrible news? As I
realised all the fresh anxiety and watchfulness that this information
would entail upon me, I faltered for a moment under a feeling of
overwhelming despair; but it was gone instantly; and within the next
second or two I had pulled myself together, the fighting instinct had
leapt up, alert and eager, and I was once more ready to do battle
against the whole ruffianly mob of them for the life and honour of the
girl that I now loved beyond any other earthly thing.

"And what do the men say to it?"

I asked, stepping up on the grating and, hands in pocket, balancing
myself jauntily to the heave and rol