Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/178

dent souls and feared the Old One and dared not steal a wink of sleep. But though there was much need that the men should sleep, there was small need of a watch, for the ship lay in that deep cove in the little round bay, with masses of palms on the high banks, which hid her from waterline to truck.

At mid-afternoon, as the Old One had bade them, the cook and the carpenter called the men, who came tumbling up, quickly awake and breathing heavily, since there was work to be done ere another morning broke, and, like enough, blood to be spilled.

From a chest of arms Harry Malcolm handed out.muskets and pistols and pikes. "This for you," he said -"and this for you - and here's a tall gun for Paul Craig. Nay, curse not! Prayers, Paul, shall profit thee more than curses."

"I tell ye what, I'll not carry this great heavy gun," quoth he, and turned a dull red from anger.

"Blubububububub!" one cried, and all laughed.

"'T is lucky, Paul," retorted Harry Malcolm, "that Tom Jordan is an easy, merciful man, or there's more than one back would bear a merry pattern in welts." He took up another musket -- cumbersome, unwieldy weapons they were, which a man must rest for firing - and handed it to another. "And this for you."

Jacob was turning over and over on his palm powder from a newly opened barrel, and the Old One was leaning on the quarter-deck rail, whence he sleepily watched the small groups that were all the time gathering and parting. Will Canty, his face a little whiter than ordinary and his hand holding his firelock upright by the barrel, stood ill at ease by the forecastle. The boys lurked in corners, keeping as much as possible out of the