ere's no movin' of 'em from that."

"All right, my lad," said I. "You will find, before many hours are over
your head, that you have made a wise choice. Can you read?"

The fellow intimated that he could.

"Then," said I, "I will write out such instructions as it will be
necessary for me to give you, and you must find an opportunity to read
them over, unobserved by the rest. And you must also obey them to the
letter; for upon your obedience will depend the success or failure of my
scheme."

With which I left him, and went below for my sextant.

Upon working out the result of my meridian observation, I found that we
were close upon one hundred and forty miles from Staten Island, which
bore North by East a quarter East of us--a distance which might be
traversed in less than forty-eight hours by a properly-equipped boat, in
fine weather. But what if it should come on to blow again? It was a
contingency that I did not care to contemplate. There was one point in
our favour: the mercury was rising slowly and steadily; and, please God,
if we were able to leave the brig in good time we might succeed in
reaching shelter of some sort before the setting-in again of bad
weather. And, in any case, it was a contingency that had to be faced,
since it was perfectly clear, by this time, that the brig had been so
severely battered and strained during the late gale that nothing we
could do would avail to keep her afloat much longer.

Having pricked off the brig's position on the chart, I proceeded to
write out my instructions to the man Harry. It may perhaps be thought
that, in committing those instructions to paper, I was doing an
imprudent thing--that I was, in fact, furnishing irrefutable evidence of
my intentions, should the man choose to play me false, and show the
paper to his companions. But I had faith in the fellow; there was an
honest look in his eyes; and the fact that he had of his own free will
warned me of the other men's intentions was another point in his favour.
And, last but not least, I believed that he had wit enough to see that
he would be better serving his own interests by attaching himself to me
than by throwing in his lot with the others, and that consequently he
would have no interest in playing me false; I therefore unhesitatingly
handed him his instructions at the first opportunity, and left him to
carry them out with as little delay as possible.

Upon returning to the deck, after working out my