in dismay. "My word, sir, you _have_ had a
narrer squeak, and no mistake! You stop where you are, sir, out of
sight, for a minute, while I goes for'ard and just sees whether the
rumpus have roused any of 'em. I'll be back in a brace of shakes."

So saying, Joe sauntered carelessly away forward again; loitered
aimlessly about the foredeck for a few minutes; sauntered quietly aft
again past the larboard gangway, and so round abaft the mainmast and
capstan until he rejoined me again.

"All right, sir," he whispered. "They ain't all asleep; but every
mother's son of 'em is that helplessly drunk we can do anything we likes
with 'em. Now, sir," as I stepped in on deck, "if you likes to go to
your cabin and shift into dry clothes, I'll go and cut poor Mr Forbes
adrift. I am afraid he ain't none too comfortable, for it seemed to me
as the beggars was passin' the seizings pretty taut when they lashed him
up to-night."

"Is that so?" said I, indignantly. "Then we will go and cut him adrift
before doing anything else, Joe. He may be enduring cruel torments all
this time. Where is he?"

"Locked in his own berth, sir," answered Joe. "And that reminds me, I
don't know who's got the key."

"They may have left it in the door," I hazarded. "Who locked him in?"

"Rogers and Moore, sir. They are the two ringleaders in this here
business."

We had by this time reached the mate's cabin; but found the door locked,
and the key missing. As I tried the door-handle I thought I heard a
groan from the interior; so, without wasting time to search about for
the key, I set my back against the bulkhead of the passage and my foot
against the door by the lock, and the next moment we had the door open.
A shapeless object upon the floor of the cabin, indistinctly seen in the
semi-darkness which pervaded the place, proved to be the mate, lying
just as he had been carelessly flung in there, hours before, with his
wrists and heels lashed together behind his back. The poor fellow was
in a dreadful state, having lain there all those hours in excruciating
agony from the cruel pressure of the lashings about his limbs, which,
with brutal carelessness, had been drawn so tight as to have completely
stopped the circulation of the blood in his extremities. His limbs were
now swollen almost out of recognition; he had bitten his lower lip right
through in the extremity of his torment; his beard was drenched with
bloody foam; and our efforts to re