us little of it the
lubber drank!"

"He's off, is Barebones," says another; "oh, trust Barebones!
Bones-and-Biscuits puts to sea last night, 'cause he's a duty to
perform in 'Frisco, he 'as. Trust Bones-and-Biscuits to turn up
righteous when the trumpet blows!"

And another, said he:

"I wish I had his black head under my boot this minute! My mouth's all
sand and my throat is stuck! Aye, mates," says he, "you'll moisten my
poor tongue--same as is wrote in the Scriptures!"

There were other entreaties; some of them spoke to us in French, the
most part in German. Of the boats that were left, two had rowed away
for the lesser gate, but five drifted about our rock and drew so close
that we could have tossed a biscuit to them. Never have I seen a crowd
of faces more repulsive or jowls so repellent. Iron-limbed men, fat
Germans, sleek Frenchmen, Greeks, niggers, some armed with rifles, some
with fearsome knives, they squatted all together in the open boats and
roared together for pity and release. Then, for the first time, I was
able to see how cruelly Czerny's gun had dealt with them in the
darkness of the night. It was horrible to see the bloody limbs, the
open wounds, the matted hair, the gaping faces of these creatures of a
desperado's mad ambition. The boats themselves were splintered and
hacked as though heavy hatches had beaten them. I could wonder no
longer that they called the truce; and yet, knowing why they called it,
what was I to do? Let them set foot on the plateau, and we, but a
handful at the best, might be swept into the sea like flies from a
wall. I say that I was at my wits' end. Every merciful instinct urged
me to give them water; every prudent voice cried, "Beat them off."

"If there's fight in that lot, I'm as black as yonder nigger!" said
Peter Bligh, when he looked at them a little while, very
contemptuously. "Not a kick to-day among the lot of them, by Jericho!
But you cannot give them water, captain," he goes on, "for you've
little to give."

Clair-de-Lune, thinking deeper, was, nevertheless, for a stem refusal.

"Keep them off, captain, that's my advice," says he. "They very
desperate, dangerous men. They drink water, then cut throat. Make ear
deaf and say cistern all empty. They think you die, and they wait, but
come aboard--no, by thunder!"

Now, I knew that this was reason, and when Doctor Gray and Captain
Nepeen added their words to the Frenchman's I stepped down to the
water's edge a