stock. He thought of Job who must have been
seized in his bunk below. The poor fellow was to have short happiness in
his changed way of life, it seemed.

Jeremy tried to steel his nerves against the test he was sure must
follow soon. Instead of going to pieces in terror, he succeeded in
forcing himself to the attitude of a young stoic. He had done nothing of
which he was ashamed, and he felt that if he was called to face a just
God in the next twenty-four hours, he would be able to hold his head up
like a man.

Time passed, and he heard a heavy tramp coming along the deck. He was
hoisted roughly by hands under his arm-pits and placed upon his feet,
though he was still too weak to stand without support. A dozen faces
surrounded him, glaring angrily. Out of a sort of mist that partly
obscured his vision came the terrible leer of the man with the broken
nose. The twisted mouth opened and the man spoke with a deliberate
ugliness. The very absence of oaths seemed to make his slow speech more
deadly.

"Ah, ye misbegotten young fool," he said, "so there ye stand, scared
like the cowardly spawn ye are. We took ye, and kept ye, and fed ye.
What's more, we was friends to ye, eh mates? An' how do ye treat yer
friends? Leave 'em to starve or drown on a sinkin' ship! Sneak off like
a dog an' a son of a cowardly dog!" Jeremy went white with anger. "An'
now"--Daggs' voice broke in a sudden snarl--"an' now, we'll show ye how
we treat such curs aboard a ten-gun buccaneer! Stand by, mates, to
keel-haul him!"

At this moment a second party of pirates poured swearing out of the
fo'c's'le hatch, dragging Job Howland in their midst. He was stripped to
his shirt and under-breeches and had apparently received a few bruises
in the tussle below. Jeremy's spirits were momentarily revived by seeing
that some of the buccaneers had suffered like inconveniences, while the
young ex-man-o'-war's-man was gingerly feeling of a shapeless blob that
had been his nose. Dave Herriot, his head tied up in a bandage, was
superintending the preparations for punishment. "Let's have the boy
first," he shouted.

Aboard a square-rigger, keel-hauling was practiced from the main
yardarm. The victim was dragged completely under the ship's bottom,
scraping over the jagged barnacles, and drawn up on the other side, more
often dead than living. As the sloop had only fore and aft sails, they
had merely run a rope under the bottom, bringing both ends together
amidship