“In uniform, sir!  The uniform of the king’s guard.  Those are the folk I have come for.”

“And you wish to take them back?”

“Most certainly.”

“Poor folk!  I am sorry for them.”

“And so am I, but orders are orders and must be done.”

“Quite so.  Well, the old man is in his bunk asleep.  The maid is in a cabin below.  And the other is sleeping down the hold there where we had to put him, for there is no room elsewhere.”

“Sleeping, you say?  We had best surprise him.”

“But think you that you dare do it alone!  He has no arms, it is true, but he is a well-grown young fellow.  Will you not have twenty men up from the boat?”

Some such thought had passed through the officer’s head, but the captain’s remark put him upon his mettle.

“Come with me, corporal,” said he.  “Down this ladder, you say?”

“Yes, down the ladder and straight on.  He lies between those two cloth bales.”  Ephraim Savage looked up with a smile playing about the corners of his grim mouth.  The wind was whistling now in the rigging, and the stays of the mast were humming like two harp strings.  Amos Green lounged beside the French sergeant who guarded the end of the rope ladder, while Tomlinson, the mate, stood with a bucket of water in his hand exchanging remarks in very bad French with the crew of the boat beneath him.

The officer made his way slowly down the ladder which led into the hold, and the corporal followed him, and had his chest level with the deck when the other had reached the bottom.  It may have been something in Ephraim Savage’s face, or it may have been the gloom around him which startled the young Frenchman, but a sudden suspicion flashed into his mind.

“Up again, corporal!” he shouted, “I think that you are best at the top.”

“And I think that you are best down below, my friend,” said the Puritan, who gathered the officer’s meaning from his gesture.  Putting the sole of his boot against the man’s chest he gave a shove which sent both him and the ladder crashing down on to the officer beneath him.  As he did so he blew his whistle, and in a moment the hatch was back in its place and clamped down on each side with iron bars.

The sergeant had swung round at the sound of the crash, but Amos Green, who had waited for the movement, threw his arms about him and hurled him overboard into the sea.  At the same instant the connecting rope was severed, the foreyard creaked back into position again, and the bucketful of salt water soused down over the gunner and his gun, putting out his linstock and wetting his priming.  A shower of balls from the marines piped through the air or rapped up against the planks, but the boat was tossing and jerking in the short choppy waves and to aim was impossible.  In vain the men tugged and strained at their oars while the gunner worked like a maniac to relight his