re of the burning match in
the hand of Vickers's trusty servant.

The entrapped men looked up the hatchway, but the guard had already
closed in upon it, and some of the ship's crew--with that carelessness
of danger characteristic of sailors--were peering down upon them. Escape
was hopeless.

"One minute!" cried Vickers, confident that one second would be
enough--"one minute to go quietly, or--"

"Surrender, mates, for God's sake!" shrieked some unknown wretch from
out of the darkness of the prison. "Do you want to be the death of us?"

Jemmy Vetch, feeling, by that curious sympathy which nervous natures
possess, that his comrades wished him to act as spokesman, raised his
shrill tones. "We surrender," he said. "It's no use getting our brains
blown out." And raising his hands, he obeyed the motion of Vickers's
fingers, and led the way towards the barrack.

"Bring the irons forward, there!" shouted Vickers, hastening from his
perilous position; and before the last man had filed past the still
smoking match, the cling of hammers announced that the Crow had resumed
those fetters which had been knocked off his dainty limbs a month
previously in the Bay of Biscay.

In another moment the trap-door was closed, the howitzer rumbled back to
its cleatings, and the prison breathed again.

* * * * *

In the meantime, a scene almost as exciting had taken place on the upper
deck. Gabbett, with the blind fury which the consciousness of failure
brings to such brute-like natures, had seized Frere by the throat,
determined to put an end to at least one of his enemies. But desperate
though he was, and with all the advantage of weight and strength upon
his side, he found the young lieutenant a more formidable adversary than
he had anticipated.

Maurice Frere was no coward. Brutal and selfish though he might be, his
bitterest enemies had never accused him of lack of physical courage.
Indeed, he had been--in the rollicking days of old that were
gone--celebrated for the display of very opposite qualities. He was an
amateur at manly sports. He rejoiced in his muscular strength, and, in
many a tavern brawl and midnight riot of his own provoking, had proved
the fallacy of the proverb which teaches that a bully is always a
coward. He had the tenacity of a bulldog--once let him get his teeth in
his adversary, and he would hold on till he died. In fact he was, as
far as personal vigour wen