The fore end of a sailorman emerged, a broad-faced, blue-eyed individual blinking against the sunlight. He scrambled on deck, and was followed by another, dark, better looking, and younger.
Not a word did these people utter as they stood taking in everything round them from the horizon to the girl.
Then the first described brought his eyes to rest on the girl.
Let me interpolate now Mr. Harman’s part of the story in his own words.
“When Cap Ginnell bottled me and Blood in the cabin of the _Heart of Ireland_,” said he, “we did a bit of shoutin’ and then fell quiet. There ain’t no use in shoutin’ against a two-inch thick cabin hatch overlaid with iron platin’. He’d made that hatch on purpose for the bottling of parties; must have, by the way it worked and by the armamints on it.
“You may say we were mugs to let ourselves be bottled like that. We were. Y’ see, we hadn’t thought it over. We hadn’t thought it would pay Ginnell to abandon the _Heart_ for a derelick schooner better found and up to her hatches with a cargo of champagne, or we wouldn’t have let him fool us down into the cabin like we did and then clap the hatch on us. Leavin’ alone the better exchange, we hadn’t thought it would be nuts to him to do us in the eye. Mugs we were, and mugs we found ourselves, sittin’ on the cabin table and listenin’ to the blighter clearin’ the crew off. There weren’t no chance of any help from them. Chows they were, carin’ for nothin’ s’long as their chests an’ opium pipes was safe.
“The skylight overhead was no use for more’n a cat to crawl through, if it’d been open, which it wasn’t, more’n an inch, and fastened from the deck side. Portholes! God bless you, them scuttles wasn’t big enough for a cat’s face to fit in.
“I says to Blood: ‘Listen to the blighters! Oh, say, can’t we do nuthin’, sittin’ here on our beam ends? Ain’t you got nuthin’ in your head? Ain’t you got a match in your pocket to fire the tub and be done with it?’
“‘It’ll be lucky for us,’ says Blood, ‘if Cap Ginnell doesn’t fire her before he leaves her.’ With that, I didn’t think anythin’ more about matches. No, sir! For ha’f an hour after the last boatload of Chows and their dunnage was off the ship and away I was sniffin’ like a dog at the hatch cover for the smell of smoke, and prayin’ to the A’mighty between sniffs.