“Very well, then,” Francis said.  “If you wish it so I will remain your leader, but we will nevertheless hold our council of war.  The question which I shall first present to your consideration is, which is the best way to set about retaking the Pluto?”

There was a burst of laughter among the young men.  The matter of fact way in which Francis proposed, what seemed to them an impossibility, amused them immensely.

“I am quite in earnest,” Francis went on, when the laughter had subsided.  “If it is possibly to be done, I mean to retake the Pluto, and I have very little doubt that it is possible, if we set about it in the right way.  In the first place, we may take it as absolutely certain that we very considerably outnumber the Genoese on board.  They must have suffered in the battle almost as much as we did, and have had nearly as many killed and wounded.  In the second place, if Doria intends to profit by his victory, he must have retained a fair amount of fighting men on board each of his galleys, and, weakened as his force was by the losses of the action, he can spare but a comparatively small force on board each of the fifteen captured galleys.  I should think it probable that there are not more than fifty men in charge of the Pluto, and we number fully three times that force.  The mere fact that they let down our food to us by ropes, instead of bringing it down, showed a consciousness of weakness.”

“What you say is quite true,” Paolo Parucchi, the other officer of the Pluto, said; “but they are fifty well-armed men, and we are a hundred and fifty without arms, and shut down in the hold, to which must be added the fact that we are cut off from our men, and our men from us.  They are, as it were, without a head to plan, while we are without arms to strike.”

A murmur of approval was heard among some of the young men.

“I do not suppose that there are no difficulties in our way,” Francis said quietly; “or that we have only, next time the hatch is opened, to say to those above, ’Gentlemen of Genoa, we are more numerous than you are, and we therefore request you to change places with us immediately.’  All I have asserted, so far, is that we are sufficiently strong to retake the ship, if we get the opportunity.  What we have now to settle, is how that opportunity is to come about.

“To begin with, has anyone a dagger or knife which has escaped the eye of our searchers?”

No one replied.

“I was afraid that nothing had escaped the vigilance of those who appropriated our belongings.  As, however, we have no weapons or tools, the next thing is to see what there is, in the hold, which can be turned to account.  It is fortunate we are on board the Pluto, instead of being transferred to another ship, as we already know all about her.  There are some iron bolts driven in along a beam at the farther end.  They have been used, I suppose, at some time or other for hanging the carcasses of animals from.  Let us see whether there is any chance of getting some of them out.”