rawn his hanger to cripple him, when Sharkey
came hurrying from his cabin with an eager face. "We can do better with
the hound!" he cried. "Sink me if it is not a rare plan. Throw him
into the sail-room with the irons on, and do you come here,
quarter-master, that I may tell you what I have in my mind."

So Craddock, bruised and wounded in soul and body, was thrown into the
dark sail-room, so fettered that he could not stir hand or foot, but his
Northern blood was running strong in his veins, and his grim spirit
aspired only to make such an ending as might go some way towards atoning
for the evil of his life. All night he lay in the curve of the bilge
listening to the rush of the water and the straining of the timbers
which told him that the ship was at sea and driving fast. In the early
morning someone came crawling to him in the darkness over the heap of
sails.

"Here's rum and biscuits," said the voice of his late mate. "It's at
the risk of my life, Master Craddock, that I bring them to you."

"It was you who trapped me and caught me as in a snare!" cried Craddock.
"How shall you answer for what you have done?"

"What I did I did with the point of a knife betwixt my blade-bones."

"God forgive you for a coward, Joshua Hird. How came you into their
hands?"

"Why, Master Craddock, the pirate ship came back from its careening upon
the very day that you left us. They laid us aboard, and, short-handed
as we were, with the best of the men ashore with you, we could offer but
a poor defence. Some were cut down, and they were the happiest. The
others were killed afterwards. As to me, I saved my life by signing on
with them."

"And they scuttled my ship?"

"They scuttled her, and then Sharkey and his men, who had been watching
us from the brushwood, came off to the ship. His mainyard had been
cracked and fished last voyage, so he had suspicions of us, seeing that
ours was whole. Then he thought of laying the same trap for you which
you had set for him."

Craddock groaned. "How came I not to see that fished mainyard?" he
muttered. "But whither are we bound?"

"We are running north and west."

"North and west! Then we are heading back towards Jamaica."

"With an eight-knot wind."

"Have you heard what they mean to do with me?"

"I have not heard. If you would but sign the articles--"

"Enough, Joshua Hird! I have risked my soul too often."

"As you wish. I have done what I could. Farewell!