Who, pray, would accept for sober truth such a tale as any scoundrel would make out of whole cloth to save himself from hanging? Despite all he could do or say, he now saw plainly, he must stand convicted, in their minds, of being at the very least a spy sent to learn the state of affairs on board this tall ship in which he was now a prisoner.
Then back to the cabin came young Mr. Rance and very much excited did he appear.
"Sir," he exclaimed, and stood in the door.
"A ship lieth two cable's lengths from land on the farther side of the point, and a boat hath set out from her and is following the shore as if to reconnoitre."
"Ah," said the captain, "it is quite as I thought. No drums, mind you, nor trumpets, Mr. Rance. Call the men to quarters by word of mouth. Make haste and put springs on the cables if there be time before the boat rounds the point. Bid the gunner make all preparations for action and order a sharp watch kept; but order also that there be no sound or appearance of unusual activity. Send me a corporal and a file of men, and the master."
"Come, boy, clear the table," said the captain.
The master came first, but the corporal and his men were close at the master's heels.
"Take this fellow to the gun room, clap him into irons, and set a man to watch him."
And thus sending before them Boatswain Marsham, erstwhile of the Rose of Devon frigate, the corporal and his men departed from the cabin.
There were guns on the right hand and the left--ordnance of a size to sink the Rose of Devon with a broadside. There were sailormen thronging between-decks in numbers to appall the young prisoner who came down among them nearly naked from his swim. Though no greater of burthen than the Rose of Devon, the ship was better armed and better manned, and all signs told of the stern discipline of a man-of-war.
The alternatives that Phil Marsham faced, as he sat in shackles with no spirit to reply to the jibes of the sailors and watched men stripped to the waist and moving deftly among the guns, were not those a man would choose. If his old shipmates took this tall and handsome ship, a blow on the head and a burial over the side was the kindest treatment he could expect of them. And if not--the gallows loomed beyond a Court of Admiralty. For hours the hum of voices went up and down the main deck and for hours Boatswain Marsham sat with the bolts upon his legs and wrists and saw the life of the ship go on around him. The men leaped here and there at a word, or lolled by their guns waiting for orders. The night wore on, and nodding, Phil thought of the two ships lying one on each side of the point of land and by all appearances two quiet merchantmen. Yet one, he knew to his sorrow, smelled devilishly of brimstone; and the other, in which he now sat a prisoner, though her ports were closed and her claws sheathed, was like some great tiger watching through half-shut eyes a bold, adventurous goat.