Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/202

what may, there is one score I shall settle before my hour comes. Go forward, boatswain, and bear a sharp watch at sea, and mind you come not abaft the mainmast until I give you leave.”

The Old One spoke again when Phil was on the ladder. “Mind you, boatswain: come not abaft the mainmast until I give you leave. I bear you nought but love, but I will have you know that in what I have to do I will brook no interruption.”

Though Tom Jordan had spoken him kindly, the lad was not so blunt of wit that he failed to detect suspicion in the man’s manner. He stopped by the forecastle, and looking back saw that the Old One was giving the helmsman orders, for the ship had cleared the harbour, to all appearances unpursued, and was again bearing up the coast. The Old One then came down from the quarter-deck, and, having spoken to several of the men in turn, called, "Come, Martin; come, Paul, bring the fellow in.”

And with that, he went into the great cabin, where they heard him speaking to Harry Malcolm.

As for Martin Barwick and Paul Craig, they went over to where the one had all this time been lying whom they had trussed up in ropes and hoisted on board. All the time he had been in the ship he had neither moved nor spoken, nor did he speak now as they picked him up, one at his head and one at his feet, and carried him into the cabin. The door shut and for a long time there was silence.

There were some to whom the matter was a mystery, and the boatswain was among them; but the whispering and nodding showed that more knew the secret than were ignorant of it. The ship thrust her nose into a