oot of which the
foresail lay loose and ready for hoisting. With a fold of this I
covered myself and peered along the pitch-dark deck.

No shot had been fired. I could distinguish no sound of struggle, no
English voice in all the din. The ship seemed to be full only of
yellings, rushings to-and-fro of feet, wild hammerings upon timber,
solid and hollow: and these pell-mell noises made the darkness, if
not darker, at least more terribly confusing.

The cries abated a little; the noise of hammering increased, and at
the same time grew persistent and regular, almost methodical. I had
no sooner guessed the meaning of this--that the ruffians were
fastening down the hatches on their prisoners--than one of them, at
the far end of the ship, either fetched or found a lantern, lit it,
and stood it on the after-hatch. Its rays glinted on the white teeth
and eyeballs and dusky shining skins of a whole ring of Moors
gathered around the hatchway and nailing all secure.

Now for the first time it came into my mind that these rovers spared
to kill while there remained a chance of taking their prisoners
alive; that their prey was ever the crew before the cargo; and that,
as for the captured vessel, they usually scuttled and sank her if she
drew too much water for their shallow harbours, or if (like the
_Gauntlet_) she lacked the speed for their trade. The chances were,
then, that my father yet lived. Yet how could I, naked and unarmed,
reach to him or help him?

A sound, almost plumb beneath me, recalled me to more selfish alarms.
The Moors, whether they came from the xebec or, as we agreed later,
more probably from shore, in answer to the xebec's signal-lights--
must have dropped down on us without stroke of oars. It may be that
for the last half a mile or more they had wriggled their boat down to
the attack by means of an oar or sweep shipped in the stern notch: a
device which would avoid all noise and, if they came slowly, all
warning but the ripple of briming off the bows. In any case they had
not failed to observe that the ketch was being towed; and now, having
discharged her boarding-party, their boat pushed forward to capture
ours, which lay beneath us bumping idly against the _Gauntlet's_
stem. I heard some half a dozen of them start to jabber as they
found it empty. I divined--I could not see--the astonishment in
their faces, as they stared up into the darkness.

Just then--perhaps in response to their cries--a