“You keep three bullets—­you’ll need them when the green water is spilling in here,” and he gave me a significant look.

Despair was upon him again, but I could not bring myself to feel that death awaited us.  Weak and hungry and thirsty, life was still strong, and the desire to live, if only to have vengeance on Thirkle and his men, kept up my courage.

“There is some way out—­some way we can get the upper hand.  When the water comes in I’ll be ready to give up, but not until then.”

He smiled sadly and shrugged his shoulders, looking pityingly at Rajah, who was playing at some sort of a game with grains of rice in a pannikin.  We went up the ladder again to see what the pirates were about, for it was quite still in the hold, and silence seemed more ominous than a telltale clatter.

Buckrow and Long Jim came up with a bulging sack slung in a rope.  Thirkle gave them a hand up the ladder to the boat-deck, but he let them do the hard work.

Petrak slipped a lashing over the wheel and leaned over the bridge-rail, grinning down at them, and made some remark which caused Buckrow to laugh so inordinately that he dropped his end of the rope, and the sack fell on the head of the ladder.  He pulled it up on the deck, and, thrusting his hand into his trousers-pocket, drew out a handful of gold coins and hurled them up at Petrak.

They struck the remnant of the storm-apron and rattled to the fore-deck, some of the glittering disks pelting Thirkle, who was halfway up the ladder.  Petrak threw out his hand to catch the coins, and I saw that his wrists were still encircled by steel bands.

Thirkle reprimanded them, and Petrak went back to the wheel, and Buckrow and Long Jim hoisted the sack into the boat and stowed it.  While Petrak held the spoke of the wheel with one hand, he rasped at the iron upon it with a file, cutting away the heavy manacle.

Riggs and I took turns at the scuttle, and saw Thirkle and Buckrow and Long Jim carry up a dozen or more sacks.  Some were put in the second boat, farther aft and out of the range of our vision, hidden as it was from us by the corner of the superstructure.

During the time they were below we could hear them smashing the treasure-chests.  While they were busy in the storeroom I hacked away at the scuttle-board, which was thick and of hard wood, well seasoned by continual wetting and drying in the tropic sun.

To make matters worse, I found that it was full of brass nails driven in from the outside, and Riggs told me some sailor had put a border of nails round the board and made a crude nameplate by spelling out the name of the vessel with nail-heads.  The blade of my knife encountered these nails, and I made slow work of cutting a hole large enough to admit the muzzle of our pistol.

When they had all the gold up they stowed the boats with tinned goods and casks of water.  Then they opened a bottle of wine and drank its contents, and Thirkle hurled it toward the forecastle, and it smashed on the iron plates within a few feet of us.  Buckrow and Long Jim disappeared in the saloon after this, and Thirkle looked his chart over again and motioned to Petrak to alter the helm.