ho's an enemy aboard here, just now."

"What do you mean, boy?" I asked.

"Why, just this, sir. That thundering scoundrel below there, is just
trying hard to turn all the men's heads; and if we don't look alive,
he'll do it, too."

I now felt that there might be some truth in poor Smudge's information.

"Go on, my lad," said I.

"Well, sir, I has to confess that he first tried it on with me. While
the people were dying with the plague, and no one was looking on, he
called me to him, and told me that he knowed where loads of gold was
stowed away--enough to sink the ship and freight another twice the size;
and that if I would help him to get his liberty, he'd show it to me, and
that I might have as much as I wanted. I listened to him, and thought
there would be no great harm if I was to help him to get free, and save
his neck; so I agreed to take a message to the rest of the brig's
people, to tell them to keep up their spirits, and to try and get their
arms and legs out of limbo. He then told me to hunt in the carpenter's
chest for a file, and a cold-chisel and hammer. While I was looking one
night for the tools, the thought struck me, all of a heap like--if this
chap was to get free, what would he do with Mr Vernon and you, sir, who
had been so kind to me, and saved me from so many of that Mr Chissel's
finnams? Why, he'll be cutting their throats, to be sure, and making
off with the schooner; and where should I then be, I should like to
know. So I goes back to Captain Delano, and tells him I couldn't find
the tools. He swears a great deal at this, and tells me to go and look
for them again; and that if I didn't bring them, he'd be the death of
me. How he was to do me any harm while he was chained hand and foot, I
couldn't tell; but still I was very much frightened. Well,
howsomedever, I keeps a watch on him, and I soon seed that he was trying
it on with some of the _Helen's_ crew; and at last, that he'd got one of
our people to listen to him. How far he had succeeded in getting them
over to his plans, I couldn't tell till just now. I had stowed myself
away in the coil of the hawser, just before the bulkhead of his cabin,
where I lay in a dark shadow, so that no one could see me, when I heard
a man talking to him. I made out that he had almost got his fetters off
his limbs, and that the other people would be shortly free of theirs;
and that they knew where the arms were to be found; and that as soon as