Towards the second bell in the second "dog" there was a change in the monotony of the scene. I heard an order to heave the barque to, and presently I made haste to put the ropes back in their places and to await the happening. I felt all motion cease, and then someone hauling at the hawser, so that the jolly-boat was pulled against the side of the bigger ship; and, looking up, I saw half-a-dozen of Black's gang watching me from the quarter-deck. Then a ladder was put over the bulwark, and Four-Eyes himself cried out not in an unkindly tone--
"Gi-me the soop, bhoys, and let's get it in him; begorra, the divil 'll have him afore the skipper if it's no mate you're givin' him!"
He came down the ladder with a great can of steaming stuff; and the sea having fallen away with the sun to a dead calm, he stepped off the ladder to the stern seat, and then bent over me. But I saw this only, that he had a knife in his belt; and I made up my mind in a moment to get it from him.
"The young 'un from Paris," he cried, as he took a long look at me, "and near to axin' for a priest, by the houly saints; but I was tellin' ye to stop where ye was, and it's no thanks ye were giving me. Bedad, and a pretty place ye're going to, sorr, at your own wish--the divil knows what's the end av it--but sup a bit, for it's fastin' ye are by the luk av ye, and long gone at that!"
Kindly words he gave me; and he held to the rope with one hand while he put the can of hot stuff to my lips with the other. I drank half of it with great gulps, feeling the warmth spread through my body to my very toes as the broth went down; and a great hope consoled me, for I had his knife, having snatched it from him when first he stooped, and it lay in the tarpaulin beneath me. The good luck of the theft made me quick to empty the pot of gravy; and when I had returned the can, Four-Eyes went over the side again, and the yacht moved onward lazily in the softest of breezes from the west. But my boat lay behind her again; and I did not stir from my restful position until it was full dark; though the going down of the sun had left a clear night and a zenith richly set with a shimmer of stars, which did not give any great promise to my thoughts of coming freedom.