sigh of relief. "I did what seemed right, you know."

"Rig that whip," said Swarth, turning his back and ascending the poop.

Tom secured the gear, and climbing aloft and out the gaff, fastened the
block directly over the lazarette-hatch, just forward of the binnacle.
Then he overhauled the rope until it reached the deck, and descended.

"Come up here on the poop," called the captain; and he came.

"Shall I go down and hook on, sir?" he asked zealously.

"Make a hangman's noose in the end of the rope," said Swarth.

"Eh--what--a runnin' bowline--a timber-hitch? No, no," he yelled, as he
read the captain's face. "You can't do it. The men----"

"Make a hangman's knot in the end of the rope," thundered the captain,
his pistol at Tom's ear.

With a face like that of a death's-head he tied the knot.

"Pass it round your neck and draw it tight."

Hoarse, inarticulate screams burst from the throat of the man, ended by
a blow on the side of his face by the captain's iron-hard fist. He
fell, and lay quiet, while Swarth himself adjusted the noose and bound
the hands with his own handkerchief. The men at the wheel strained
their necks this way and that, with tense waves of conflicting
expressions flitting across their weary faces, and the men forward,
aroused by the screams, stood about in anxious expectancy until they
heard Swarth's roar: "Lay aft here, the watch!"

They came, feeling their way along by rail and hatch.

"Clap on to that gant-line at the main fife-rail, and lift this bag of
coffee out o' the lazarette," sang out the captain.

They found the loose rope, tautened it, hooked the bight into an open
sheave in the stanchion, and listlessly walked forward with it. When
they had hoisted the unconscious Tom to the gaff, Swarth ordered:
"Belay, coil up the fall, and go forrard."

They obeyed, listlessly as ever, with no wondering voice raised to
inquire why they had not lowered the coffee they had hoisted.

Captain Swarth looked at the square-rigged ship, now on the port
quarter--an ill-defined blur to his imperfect vision. "Fine chance we'd
have had," he muttered, "if that happened to be a bulldog. Angel," he
said, as the mate drew near, "hot coffee is good for moon-blindness,
taken externally, as a blistering agent--a counter-irritant. We have no
fly-blisters in the medicine-chest, but smoking-hot grease must be just
as good, if not better than either. Have the cook heat up a potful, and
you get me out a