The cook cautiously fingered the keen edge of his cleaver as we looked out
and saw that dawn was brightening in the east.
"Dat Falk, he say he gwine git us yet," the cook muttered. "Maybe so--maybe
not. Maybe we ain't gwine last as long as dat."
"All hands aft!"
Frank and I looked at each other. The galley was as safe and comfortable as
any place aboard ship and we were reluctant to leave it.
"_All hands aft!_" came the call again.
"Ah reckon," Frank said thoughtfully, "me and you better be gwine. When
Mistah Hamlin he holler like dat, he want us."
Light had come with amazing swiftness, and already we could see the deck
from stem to stern without help of the torches, which still flamed and sent
thin streamers of smoke drifting into the mist.
As we emerged from the galley, I noticed that the after-hatch was half
open. That in itself did not surprise me; stranger things than that had
come to pass in the last hour or two; but when some one cautiously emerged
from the hold, with a quick, sly glance at those on the quarter-deck, I'll
confess that I was surprised. It was the man from Boston.
Smiling broadly and turning his black rat-like eyes this way and that, the
chief of our wild allies, who held a naked kris from which drops of blood
were falling, stood beside Roger.
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