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deed. Now, another drink of lemonade, if you please--by the way, you may as well leave the jug and glass within my reach--and then, if you insist upon running away, why, good-bye for the present." The lad left me, and I fell into a rather gloomy reverie upon the fate of poor Ryan and that of the gallant fellows who had fallen in our ill-planned attack upon the occupants of this unlucky creek, as well as upon my own future, the uncertainty of which stood out the more clearly the longer I looked at it. I think I must have become slightly light-headed eventually, for twice or thrice I caught myself muttering aloud in a rather excited fashion, now imagining myself to be in the thick of the fight once more, and anon fancying myself to be one of the slaves that were imprisoned in the brigantine's noisome hold; until finally my ideas became so hopelessly jumbled together that I could make nothing of them, and then followed a period of oblivion from which I awoke to find the state-room faintly illumined by the turned-down lamp screwed to the ship's side near the head of my bunk, and by the more brilliant rays of a lamp in the main cabin, the light of which streamed through the lattices in the upper panel of the state-room door. The ship was heeling slightly, and I knew by the gurgle and wash of water along her side that she was under weigh, but still in perfectly smooth water, for I was unable to detect the slightest heave, or rising and falling motion in her. There was an intermittent faint murmur of voices overhead, an occasional footfall on the deck, and now and then the creak and clank of the wheel-chains following a call from the forecastle, all of which led me to the conclusion that the brigantine was effecting the passage of the creek on her way seaward. This state of things continued for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when I felt the vessel lift as if to a small swell, the wash and splash of the water along her side became more pronounced, then came a light plunge, with a corresponding roar of the bow wave; her heel perceptibly increased, and the pipe of the wind took a more sonorous sound; an expression or two in tones that seemed to indicate a feeling of relief and satisfaction passed between the persons overhead, and then a string of orders pealed forth from one of them, followed by the clatter of ropes thrown down on the deck, and the cries of the crew as they made sail upon the vessel. The movements of the cr
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