“What! not taken them, Joan?”

“They won’t be taken,” she said fiercely.  “Do you think, unless ’twas over their dead bodies, they’d ever let king’s men stand masters on the Lottery’s deck?”

Eve’s heart died within her, and with one rush every detail of the lawless life seemed to come before her.

“There they go again!” cried Joan; and this time, by the sound, she knew their position was altered to the westward and somewhat nearer to land.  “Lord send they mayn’t knaw their course!” she continued:  “’tis but a point or two on, and they’ll surely touch the Steeple Reef.—­Awh, you blidthirsty cowards!  I wish I’d the pitchin’ of every man of ’ee overboards:  ’tis precious little mercy you’d get from me.  And the blessed sawls to be caught in yer snarin’ traps close into home, anighst their very doors, too!—­Eve, I must go and see what they means to do for ’em.  They’ll never suffer to see ’em butchered whilst there’s a man in Polperro to go out and help ’em.”

Forgetting in her terror all the difficulties she had before seen in the path, Eve managed to keep up with Joan, whose flying footsteps never stayed until she found herself in front of a long building close under shelter of the Peak which had been named as a sort of assembling-place in case of danger.

“’Tis they?” Joan called out in breathless agony, pushing her way through the crowd of men now hastening up from all directions toward the captain of the Cleopatra.

“I’m feared so;” and his grave face bespoke how fraught with anxiety his fears were.

“What can it be, d’ee think?”

“Can’t tell noways.  They who brought us word saw the Hart sail, and steady watch has been kept up, so that us knaws her ain’t back.”

“You manes to do somethin’ for ’em?” said Joan.

“Never fear but us’ll do what us can, though that’s mighty little, I can tell ’ee, Joan.”

Joan gave an impatient groan.  Her thorough comprehension of their danger and its possible consequences lent activity to her distress, while Eve, with nothing more tangible than the knowledge that a terrible danger was near, seemed the prey to indefinite horrors which took away from her every sense but the sense of suffering.

By this time the whole place was astir, people running to this point and that, asking questions, listening to rumors, hazarding a hundred conjectures, each more wild than the other.  A couple of boats had been manned, ready to row round by the cliff.  One party had gone toward the Warren, another to Yellow Rock.  All were filled with the keenest desire not only to aid their comrades, but to be revenged on those who had snared them into this cunningly-devised pitfall.  But amid all this zeal arose the question, What could they do?

Absolutely nothing, for by this time the firing had ceased, the contest was apparently over, and around them impenetrable darkness again reigned supreme.  To show any lights by which some point of land should be discovered might only serve as a beacon to the enemy.  To send out a boat might be to run it into their very jaws, for surely, were assistance needed, those on board the Lottery would know that by this time trusty friends were anxiously watching, waiting for but the slightest signal to be given to risk life and limb in their service.