had.  But Shard alone on the quarter-deck paced to and fro pondering, brooding and wondering.  He had chopped off Bad Jack’s wounded hand and given him a hook out of store, for captain does doctor upon these occasions and Shard, who was ready for most things, kept half a dozen or so of neat new limbs, and of course a chopper.  Bad Jack had gone below swearing a little and said he’d lie down for a bit, the men were smoking and singing on the sand, and Shard was there alone.  The thought that troubled Shard was:  what would the Arabs do?  They did not look like men to go away for nothing.  And at back of all his thoughts was one that reiterated guns, guns, guns.  He argued with himself that they could not drag them all that way on the sand, that the Desperate Lark was not worth it, that they had given it up.  Yet he knew in his heart that that was what they would do.  He knew there were fortified towns in Africa, and as for its being worth it, he knew that there was no pleasant thing left now to those defeated men except revenge, and if the Desperate Lark had come over the sand why not guns?  He knew that the ship could never hold out against guns and cavalry, a week perhaps, two weeks, even three:  what difference did it make how long it was, and the men sang: 

    Away we go, Oho, Oho, Oho,
    A drop of rum for you and me
    And the world’s as round as the letter O
    And round it runs the sea.

A melancholy settled down on Shard.

About sunset Lieutenant Smerdrak came up for orders.  Shard ordered a trench to be dug along the port side of the ship.  The men wanted to sing and grumbled at having to dig, especially as Shard never mentioned his fear of guns, but he fingered his pistols and in the end Shard had his way.  No one on board could shoot like Captain Shard.  That is often the way with captains of pirate ships, it is a difficult position to hold.  Discipline is essential to those that have the right to fly the skull-and-cross-bones, and Shard was the man to enforce it.  It was starlight by the time the trench was dug to the captain’s satisfaction and the men that it was to protect when the worst came to the worst swore all the time as they dug.  And when it was finished they clamoured to make a feast on some of the killed oxen, and this Shard let them do.  And they lit a huge fire for the first time, burning abundant scrub, they thinking that Arabs daren’t return, Shard knowing that concealment was now useless.  All that night they feasted and sang, and Shard sat up in his chart-room making his plans.

When morning came they rigged up the cutter as they called the captured horse and told off her crew.  As there were only two men that could ride at all these became the crew of the cutter.  Spanish Dick and Bill the Boatswain were the two.

Shard’s orders were that turn and turn about they should take command of the cutter and cruise about five miles off to the North East all the day but at night they were to come in.  And they fitted the horse up with a flagstaff in front of the saddle so that they could signal from her, and carried an anchor behind for fear she should run away.