we're bound to. There
you'll be put ashore, and I calculate you'll have to make yourselves
useful at the depot. There's plenty of work to be done there, and not
too many to do it, so you'll be valuable there. I won't keep you on
board here, because I can see you'd never work with me or be anything
else but an anxiety to me; but _there_ you can't do me any harm. And,
take my advice, stranger, don't cut up rough--go slow and sing small
when you get there, because my chief mate--who is a Greek, and is in
charge there--is a powerful short-tempered man, and apt to make things
downright uncomfortable for them that don't please him."

Captain Staunton and Bowles looked each other in the face for a full
minute, too much overcome by consternation and dismay to utter a single
word. Then the skipper, recovering himself, turned to Johnson, who
stood by intently watching them, and said:

"I thank you, sir, for having come to the point and put our position
thus explicitly before us with so little waste of time. Happily the
evil is not yet irreparable. We can never be anything but a source of
anxiety and disquietude to you, as you have already admitted; therefore
I trust you will allow us to return to our boat as we came; by which act
we shall relieve you of a very great embarrassment, and at the same time
give ourselves a chance--a very slight one, it is true--of arriving at
the place we are so anxious to reach."

"Too late, stranger," replied Johnson. "Here you are, and here you must
now stay. Look over the side and you will see that your boat is no
longer there. She was stove and cast adrift half an hour ago. And even
if she had still been alongside, do you think my men would let you go
now that you have been aboard of us and seen our strength? I tell you,
stranger, that before you could get ten yards from the brig they would
bring her broadside to bear upon you and send you all to the bottom,
riddled with grape, and I couldn't stop 'em. No; you're here, and I
reckon you'll have to stay and make the best of it. You'll find your
traps down below there; the lads wanted to overhaul them, but I guess I
shamed them out of _that_," drawing half out of his pockets a pair of
revolvers as he spoke.

"Are we to consider ourselves as prisoners then, and to look upon the
hold there as our jail?" inquired Captain Staunton.

"That's as _you_ please," retorted Johnson. "So long as you keep quiet
and don't attempt any tricks yo