Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/203

heavy swell and pitched until her yards knocked on the masts; the breeze blew up and whipped the tops off the waves and showered the decks with spray; the sky darkened with clouds and threatened rain. But in the ship there was such a deep silence as stifles a man, which endured and seemed — were it possible — to grow minute by minute more intense until a low cry burst from the cabin.

The men sitting here and there on deck stirred and looked at one another; but Philip Marsham leaped to his feet.

“Sit down, lad,” said the carpenter.

“Drop your hand!”

"Nay, it is better that I keep my hand on your arm.”

“Drop your hand! Hinder me not!”

“Nay, I am obeying orders.”

There came a second cry from the cabin, and Phil laid his free hand on his dirk.

“Have care, boatswain, lest thy folly cost thee dear. There are others set to watch the deck as well as I.”

And now three men who had been sitting by the mainmast rose. They were looking toward Phil and the carpenter, and one of them slowly walked thither.

Though Philip Marsham had no fear of hard fighting, neither was he an arrant fool, and instantly he perceived that he was one man against many under circumstances that doubled the odds. His heart beat fast and a cold sweat sprang out on his forehead.

‘‘What are they doing to him?” he demanded.

“Nothing that he hath not richly earned,” said the man who had come near the two.

Scarcely conscious of his own thought, Phil glanced toward the dark and distant shore; but, slight though