greedy satisfaction the pirates were, for the time at least, utterly
oblivious to former discontent. When he got up and went to the galley
for breakfast, Jeremy was ignored by his fellows or treated as if
nothing had occurred. Indeed, there had been little real ground for
wishing to punish the boy aside from the ugly temper occasioned by
having to row a night and a day in open boats. Only Pharaoh Daggs bore
real malice toward Jeremy and his feelings were for the most part
concealed under a mask of contemptuous indifference.

As the day progressed the lad found that matters had resumed their
accustomed course and that he was in no immediate danger. He missed his
brave friend and co-partner as bitterly as if he had been a brother, but
partially consoled himself with the thought that Job's act in jumping
overboard had probably spared him the awful torture of the keel or some
worse death. The Captain would never have defended the runaway sailor as
he had done Jeremy, the boy was certain.

All day the sloop made her way south at a brisk rate, occasionally
sighting low, white beaches to starboard. Sometime in the first
dog-watch her boom went over and she ran her slim nose in past Cape May,
heading up the Delaware with the hurrying tide, while the brig's
long-boat, towing behind, swung into her wake astern.

CHAPTER XI

When the gang of buccaneers had tumbled down the hatch after Jeremy's
cry of warning, Job Howland, barely awake, had leaped to the narrow
angle that made the forward end of the fo'c's'le, seizing a pistol as he
went. Intrenching himself behind a chest, with the bulkhead behind him
and on both sides, he had kept the maddened crew at bay for several
moments. The pistol, covering the only path of attack, made them wary of
approaching too close. When, finally, a half-dozen jumped forward at
once, he pulled the trigger only to find that the weapon had not been
loaded. In desperation he grasped the muzzle in his hand and struck out
fiercely with the heavy butt, beating off his assailants time after
time. This was well enough at first, but the buccaneers, who cared much
less for a broken crown than for a bullet wound, pressed in closer and
closer, striking with fists and marline-spikes. It was soon over. They
jammed him so far into the corner than his tireless arm no longer had
free play, and then bore him down under sheer weight of numbers. When he
ceased to struggle they seized him fast and carried him t