dare cast loose a gun.

When morning dawned thickly behind the leaden sky, the three men in the
wheelhouse made out a top-gallant sail against the horizon. "By noon,"
said the skipper, "the beggars 'ull 'ave us."

He was a small pert man, was the skipper, with a sharp face, an edge to
his voice, and two little points of eyes that glowed. Salt water had not
drenched his dry cockney speech, and he was a gamin of the sea and as
keen to its gammon ways as in boyhood he had been to those of pubs
around the old Bow Bells.

Don Anastasio heard the verdict with a shudder. Given the nature of the
man, his mortal fear was the dreadfullest torture that could be devised.
The game little cockney peered into his distorted face, and wondered.
Never was there a more pitiful coward, and yet the craven had passed
through the same agony full twenty times during the last few years.
Murguia knew nothing of the noble motives which make a man stronger than
terror, but he did know a miser's passion. He begrudged even the
costlier fuel that was their hope of safety.

"Your non-payin' guest, sir," said the skipper, pointing downward.
"'Spose he wants to buy them 'ere smokestacks?"

The trooper had appeared on deck. He was clinging to a cleat in the rail
with a landsman's awkwardness and with the cunning object of proving to
the ship that he wasn't to be surprised off his feet another time. He
swayed grandly, generously, for'ard and aft, like a metronome set at a
large, sweeping rhythm. Every billow shot a flood from stern to bow, and
swished past his boots, but he was heedless of that. His head was thrown
back, a head of stubborn black curling tufts, and he seemed absorbed in
the _Luz's_ two funnels. They gave out little smoke now, for with
daylight the skipper had changed to anthracite again, in the forlorn
hope of hiding their trail. But it had lessened their steam pressure,
and in a short time, the skipper feared, the pursuer would make them
out, hull and all.

A moment later the passenger climbed into the wheelhouse. "Look
here--Mur--Murgie," he said, "for a seven-hundred-dollar rate that was
a toler'ble unsteady cabin I had last night; restless, sort of. It's
mighty curious, but something's been acting up inside of me, and I can't
seem to make out _what_ it is!" As he spoke, he glanced inquiringly
from owner to skipper. He might have been another Panurge envying the
planter of cabbages who had one foot on solid earth and the other no