The days were spent in hard work for the most part. A good deal of washing and cleaning had to be done aboard all three vessels, and as labor requiring no special skill, it fell frequently to the lot of Jeremy and Bob. It was small matter to them whether they toiled or were idle, for the blistering sun allowed no respite and it seemed preferable to sweat over something useful than over nothing at all.
On the third day after the return of the _James_ from her foraging trip, Jeremy, who had been scraping and tarring ropes for hours on end, straightened his back with a discontented grunt and looked away to the edge of the woods, his eyebrows puckered in a frown. "Bob," he said in a voice too low for any of their shipmates to hear, "Bob, I'm going to run away if something doesn't happen soon."
"You'll be shot, like as not," answered the Delaware boy.
"Well, shot let it be," he replied doggedly. "If I'm to stay aboard here all my life, I'd _rather_ be shot. It looks like the best chance we've had, right now. Will you come tonight?"
Bob thought for a moment. "I'm not afraid of their catching us," he finally said. "It's the Indians, after we're into the woods. You say you know the Indians and trust them as long as they are treated right. That may be true of the ones you've known, but these Tuscaroras are different. They don't talk the same language, and those words you learned would mayhap go for curses down here. I don't think we ought to try it."
Jeremy admitted that his previous acquaintance stood for nothing, but argued, from the fact that Bonnet had been trying to frighten them, that he had probably exaggerated the danger. Finally, not wishing to leave his friend if he could help it, he agreed to abandon the plan for the present.
They worked at the rope-tarring till suppertime, then rose wearily, stretching, and went for their salt-horse and biscuit. When the coarse rations were eaten, it was nearly sunset. Jeremy watched the sluggish water glide by below the canted rail, till at last small quivering blurs of light, the reflections of stars, began to gleam in the ripples. A faint breeze, sprung up with the coming of night, blew across the sweltering lagoon. Bob, tired out, fell asleep, his head pillowed on the deck. The pirates, some below in the bunks, some stretched on the planking, lay like dead men. After the hard labor of the day even the regular watch slumbered undisturbed. Jeremy's thoughts went drifting off into half-dreams as the soft black water lulled him with its unending whisper. His head nodded. He raised it, striving, he knew not why, to keep awake. The gentle water-sounds crept in again, soothing his drowsy ears. He was close to sleep--so close that another moment would have taken him across the border. But in that little time the sharp double cry of a heron, flying high over the lagoon, cut the night air and startled the boy broad awake.