erform his regular tasks no matter how he felt within, but once the
work was done he stumbled forward miserably and lay upon his bunk. Bob
was too wretched to talk all day, and for the time at least cared very
little whether he was rescued or keel-hauled.

Near nightfall Jeremy went aft to serve the Captain's supper, and as he
returned along the reeling wet deck in the gathering dark, he stopped a
moment to look off to windward. The racing white tops of the waves
gleamed momentarily and vanished. He was appalled at their height. While
the little vessel surged along in the trough, great slopes of foam and
black water rose on either beam, up and up like tossing hillsides. Then
would come the staggering climb to the summit, and for a dizzy second
the terrified lad, clinging to a shroud, could look for miles across the
shifting valleys. Before he could catch his breath, the sloop pitched
down the next declivity in a long, sickening sag, and rocked for a brief
instant at the foot, her masts swaying in a great arc half across the
sky. Then she began to ascend. Shivering and wide-eyed, the boy crept to
his bunk, where he fell asleep at last to the sound of screaming wind
and lashing water.

At dawn and all next day the gale swept down from the northeast
unabated. The fo'c's'le was thick with tobacco smoke and the wet reek of
the crew, for only the steersman and the lookout would stay on deck.
Bob, somewhat recovered from his seasickness, lay wide-eyed in his bunk
and heard such tales of plunder and savagery on the high seas as made
his blood run cold. When Jeremy came dripping down the ladder, early
that afternoon, he found the Delaware lad staring at Pharaoh Daggs with
a look of positive terror. The buccaneer's evil face was lit up by the
rays of the smoky lantern, hung from a hook in one of the deck beams. He
sat on the edge of the fo'c's'le table, his heavy shoulders hunched and
a long clay pipe in his teeth. "That night," he was saying, "four on us
went an' cut Sol Brig down from where they'd hanged him. We got away,
down to the sloop an' out to sea with him. I didn't have no cause to
love the old devil, but I'd ha' hated to have a ghost like his after me,
so I lent a hand. We wrapped him up decent an' gave him sea-burial from
his own deck, as he'd paced for thirty year. An' _then_," he said with a
snarl and half-turning to face Jeremy, "we got them two boys on deck!
Both of 'em said 'twas the other as told, so we treated