"Ho, Bill, is the young un gone?"

"No, my hearty, he's gone about!"

"Getting his spirits damped, I reckon."

"Some, you bet."

And then I heard a voice I knew, the voice of the Irishman,
"Four-Eyes."

"Is it the boi ye're mindin', bedad?"

"Ay, sir, he's moved a point."

"The poor divil. Throw him a sheet, one av yer; it's meself that's not
bringing the guv'ner a dead body when he wants a live one, be Saint
Pathrick!"

They tried to throw me a sheet as the man had ordered, but we had begun
to move rapidly again, and I heard it fall in the water by my head.
Though there was more hailing, the thud of the choppy sea against the
boat forbade any more hearing, and the sheet never reached me. Yet the
men had told me something with their words, and I pondered long on the
remark of the Irishman, that the "guv'ner" wanted me alive. It
explained much; and it put beyond doubt the reason why I had not been
killed in the drinking den. It was quite clear that my life was safe
from these men until they reached their chief; but where he was I had
no notion, except he were on the nameless ship; and, if that were so,
to the nameless ship I was going--that ship of horror and of mystery.
Nor could I remember anything in what I knew of Captain Black to lead
me to the hope that such a voyage was other than one to death, and
perhaps to that which might be worse than death itself.

When this strange procession had lasted about an hour, the rain ceased
and the sun shone again with renewed power, drying my clothes upon me
and giving me prodigious thirst. I struggled to reach the flask, and in
doing so I found that the ropes binding my right arm were tied with
common hitches, such as any sailor could force; and my experience as a
yachtsman let me get free of them with very little trouble. I did not
sit up at once, for I feared to be seen from the decks; but I turned my
head to look at the boat which towed me, and saw that she was a
barque-rigged yacht after the American fashion; her name _Labrador_
being conspicuous across her stern. My boat, which was no larger than I
had thought, was towed by a double hawser; but no man watched me from
the poop, and I lay down again reassured. The hope of escape was
already in my head, for I judged that we could not be far out from New
York, although no land was visible on the horizon. It occurred to me
that if they would only let me be until night I could get my left hand
and my feet free; an