lease him occasioned him such
exquisite agony that he fainted under our hands. A sharp knife,
however, speedily freed him from his bonds, after which Joe and I gently
chafed his swollen wrists and ankles until the circulation of the blood
was restored; but it was nearly an hour before the poor fellow was able
to move with any degree of freedom.

At length, however, he pronounced himself ready for action; when, going
on deck, and arming ourselves with a heavy brass belaying-pin each, the
three of us proceeded forward, resolutely determined to stand no
nonsense whatever from anybody who should presume to interfere with us.

It was, therefore, a distinctly unfortunate circumstance for Rogers that
he should, a moment or two previously, have awakened from his drunken
sleep and staggered to his feet with, apparently, some confused notion
of taking a look round the ship and assuring himself that all was right;
for, coming face to face with Forbes and _Joe_ as they rounded the
corner of the galley, he was promptly felled by the latter with a blow
from a belaying-pin that must have caused him discomfort for many a day
afterwards, while its immediate effect was to stretch him out upon the
deck senseless and bleeding. The sound of his fall disturbed one or two
of the rest--all of whom were sprawled out inertly upon the foredeck, in
the midst of empty and overturned bottles and pannikins--just
sufficiently to cause them to raise their heads and grumble out a few
unintelligible words; but we had no difficulty whatever with them, and
in less than half an hour we had the whole of them securely bound, hand
and foot, and lying at our mercy. Having reduced them to this
condition, and disarmed them, we distributed them about the deck fore
and aft, lashing each man separately to a ringbolt, cleat, or other
convenient mooring in such a way that no man might be within another's
reach--for I had heard before now of men releasing each other by working
at the lashings with their teeth--and then left them to recover their
sober senses at their leisure, while we busied ourselves about other
matters.

Our first act was to lower the port quarter-boat, get into her, and pull
ashore to the creek, where we found Sir Edgar and his party pretty much
as I had left them; he and Miss Merrivale being the only two still
awake. Our arrival was greeted with a shout of delight from the baronet
that effectually awoke the sleepers; and the whole party quick