"Now if I was the old man," said one of the younger seamen, "I tell you what I would do. I would jest land as many of us as could be spared, with cutlasses and boarding-pikes"--
"No; d--n your pistols; they make too much noise; they're all talk and no cider; besides, they miss fire half the time; and before you get ready for another shot, Don Dego has his thundering baggonet right in your g--ts; and then where are you?"
"Now you may all of you," said an old seaman, "you may all of you just pipe belay with your jaw-tackle-falls. Captain Williams knows what he's about, and you'll know before morning what he's up to. You'd better take a fool's advice, and catch a cat-nap before you're called away. The boats a'n't histed up, and when did you ever know 'em in the water after dark since we've been lying here?" So saying, the veteran disappeared down the fore-ladder.
"There goes old Jemmy Bush, starn foremost down the fore-scuttle, like a land-bear going into his hole."
"Well," said another smart, active young seaman, the favorite of the crew; "I shall take old Jemmy's advice, and go and get forty winks in my hammock. If there's more or less of us sent on this expedition, we sha'n't be called away till ten or eleven o'clock, when all the Degos are asleep, and there's nothing awake in the town but fleas and cats."
The proposition for sleeping prevailed, and the groups on the forecastle began to disappear, when the voice of the second mate was heard:
"Sir, sir," answered half a dozen eager voices at once.
"Go in the boats alongside, and see that they have their full complement of oars; and see, too, that the masts and sails are on board all of them."
"Do you hear that, my sons of brass?" said old Jones, the boatswain, "that looks as if there was going to be wigs on the green before morning."
We must now leave the marine department for awhile, in order to attend to exclusively terrene concerns. As night closed, Morton could not avoid feeling extreme anxiety; Isabella had not visited the prison since the day previous, nor had she sent any message. Doubts the most annoying possessed his mind--at one time he thought she had been detected in her schemes for his rescue; then that her courage had failed, and she had abandoned him to his fate; or that her affection for her relatives had overcome her love for him. He had partially made known to his four fellow-prisoners his hopes of relief, cautioning them against sleeping, but enjoining upon them to keep perfectly quiet.