, no ship hove in
sight to bless ours with the promise of relief!

"The next morning, Sunday, it came on to blow, and our vessel was taken
aback and nearly foundered. Fortunately, though, the mutineers not
interfering, most of them being seasick forwards, Captain Alphonse and
Basseterre started down into the waist to cast off all the sheets and
halliards they could reach, letting everything fly; whereupon we drove
before the wind and so escaped any mishap from this source, at all
events!

"Probably on account of their prostration from the effects of sea-
sickness, our enemies did not molest us in any way throughout the day;
but towards the morning my little Elsie came up the companion-way in a
state of great terror, saying she heard a sort of scratching in the hold
below, and that Ivan, her dog, was growling as if he smelt somebody
trying to get in, though we could not hear the dog on deck from the
noise of the wind and sea, and a lot of loose ropes and swinging spars
which were making a terrible row aloft.

"I went down at once with her, and without even taking the trouble to
listen I could clearly distinguish the sound of tapping beneath the
cabin deck, despite the confused jabbering of Monsieur Boisson, and the
shrill tones of his wife.

"I knelt down then and put my ear to the planking, Monsieur Boisson
watching me with his bottle-brush sort of hair standing straight up on
end with fright, and Madame, who I thought had more courage than he,
though such, evidently, I now saw was not the case--well, she was
rolling on one of the saloon settees in a fit of hysterics, screaming
and yelling at the top of her voice.

"`Who's there?' I called out in French. `Are you one of those
Haytians, or a friend and one of us? Answer! I will know who it is
when you speak!'

"`I am a friend!' came back instantly in Spanish. `Let me out, sir; I
am nearly stifled down here. The three of us who were locked in the
main hatch have worked through the cargo and broken the after bulkhead,
making our way here, but we can't get out of this, for the trap is
fastened down, sir!'

"It was Pedro Gomez, the steward, who had gone down into the hold with
two of the white sailors just before the outbreak of the mutiny to
obtain some salt pork and other food for the use of the very scoundrels
who had imprisoned them, and who, probably, believed they had all three
died by this time, like poor Cato, only through suffocation, instead of
bei