stowaways had no means of telling one hour from another
until, at length, they heard over their heads the faint, musical strokes
of the ship's bell on the forecastle head. This led them to believe that
the fog had cleared else Blackbeard would not have revealed the vessel's
position. And lifting fog meant a breeze to sweep it away from the
harbor.

"Eight bells she strikes, the first o' the forenoon watch," said Joe.
"We have been cooped in this black pit a matter of three hours a'ready."

"No more than that?" groaned Jack. "It seems at least a week. We must
divert ourselves in some wise. What say if I learn you a bit o' Latin?
And you can say over such sea songs as come to mind, for me to tuck in
my memory."

"Well said, my worthy scholar. 'Tis high time we bowled ahead with my
eddication as a proper gentleman."

Jack began to conjugate _amo_, _amas_, _amat_, and the pupil droned it
after him but the verb _to love_ recalled a black-eyed lass who had
stolen his heart in the Azores and he veered from the Latin lesson to
confide that sentimental passage. So Jack hammered nouns of the first
declension into him until they grew tired of that, and then the sea waif
played his part by reciting such fo'castle ballads as "_Neptune's Raging
Fury_; _or The Gallant Seaman's Sufferings_," and "_Sir Walter Raleigh
Sailing in the Lowlands_."

This was better than the slow agony of waiting in silence, but Joe
spoiled it by turning lovelorn and Jack bemourned fair Dorothy Stuart of
Charles Town whom he would never greet again, and they sang very softly
together a verse of "_The Maid's Lamentation_" which went like this:

"There shall be no Scarf go on my Head,
No Comb into my Hair,
No Fire burn, no Candle light
To shew my Beauty fair,
For never will I married be
Until the Day I die,
Since the Seas and the Winds
Has parted my Love and me."

This left them really in worse spirits than before, and they drowsed off
to sleep, and no wonder, after such a night as they had passed.
Accustomed to broken watches, Joe Hawkridge slept uneasily with one ear
open. Once or twice he sat up, heard Jack's steady snores, and lay down
again. It was the ship's bell which finally brought him to, and he
counted the strokes.

"Five bells, but what watch is it?" he muttered anxiously. "How long was
I napping? Lost track o' the time, so I have, and can't s