Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/157

his lips and knotting his brows, looked from one of them to another, and Phil, vaguely on the defensive, drew back and gave them a gaze as steady as they sent.

“He is doubtless a very cunning rascal,’’ Harry Malcolm put in, “who hath cut his cloth by his wits; but he is making a suit that will throttle him by its narrowness about the neck.”

The master and mate once more exchanged glances and the Old One then smiled lightly, as if again there were sunlight rippling over dark water.

“Nay, Philip, we think no ill of thee. But do thou have care to thy company. A foul trick hath been done with a mind to render us helpless at sea, so that we must crawl to the nearest land, where some base dunghill spirit is doubtless of a mind to leave our company. But we have resources; yea, and of thee, Philip, we think no ill.”

Despite their fair words, though, they were watching Philip Marsham like three old tomcats watching a sparrow, and he, being no fool, knew the reason why.

Three hard faces they showed: the one, handsome in a devilish way and keen; the second, unassuming, yet deeply astute and marked by a deeper rooted, if less frank, selfishness; the third, older, wiser, more self-centred.

The eyes of master and mate were coldly cruel; but old Jacob was too intent on his own thoughts to be cruel save by indifference.

All that day Jacob squatted on the deck and toiled with tools and wood. From the wood he chose certain long pieces, fine-grained and straight and dry and free from knots, and certain shorter and broader pieces that were suited to his purpose, and bade the carpenter