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Show ing him; and in this way. trier ex-j amining his pistols, he n posed every ! night afterward while on board "By jingo! I thought the Uu'.nf, o' ( them birds would lead to bad luck . somehow." said Henry Warren, an old for. -mas; man, with a reproachful c'ance at me. as he threw the two al- t batros.-es overboard. We now held a solemn conference to meet the emergency which was certain to come anon, and to consider the best means of subduing and disarming the culprit. "Whoever goes nigh him in the i cabin, either by the door or the sky- j light, risks being stabbed or shot." j said Tattooed Tom; "so we must go to work some other way. shipmates, and j that other way must he considered. We might close and hat tea the skylight sky-light and companiouway. and then starve or smoke him out." suggested one of the crew, Francis Probtirt, our carpenter. "Smoke him out?" echoed Tom. "Yes. as we do rats." "By what?" "Fill a bucket with spun yarn and greased Max, with sulphur and bilge-water bilge-water ain't that the medical compound com-pound for rats?" "Nonsense," said Tom; "you would burn the ship " "As he has often threatened to do,'' said Carlton, "and may do yet." A most extraordinary scheme was proposed by one man that we should launch the longboat, throw into hef some bags of bread and gang-casks oi water, unship the compass, double-bank double-bank the oars, and shove off for the coast of South America, after scuttling the brig and leaving Antonio to hia fate. We were in a horrible state of perplexity, per-plexity, and I seemed to see constantly before me the gashed bodies of my two kind, brave and hospitable friends Captain Weston and Marc Hislop lying in their berths dead and unavenged, un-avenged, with their destroyer beside them! We had the capstan-bars, and with these it was proposed to assail him when next he came on deck. Then we had the carpenter's tools, among which a hand-saw, an auger, an adze and a hatchet, made very available weapons, and these, with the old cutlass cut-lass and harpoons which figured on the night we crossed the line, were speedily appropriated. I was armed with a heavy claw-hammer, and, vowing vow-ing firmly to stand by each other, we resolved to lynch Antonio the moment mo-ment he came out of his den. While we were thus employed in ' devising the means of punishment, the dark shadows of night passed away; the morning sun came up in his tropical trop-ical splendor, and the blue waves of the southern sea rolled around us in light, but not a sail was visible on their vast expanse. The crew seemed pale and excited, as they might well he, and with buckets buck-ets of water we cleansed the deck from the blood that stained it. The morning advanced into noon, and the vessel was steered her due course, for the wind was still fair. Ned Carlton was at the wheel, and the men were all grouped forward, when suddenly sud-denly Antonio appeared on deck with a knife in his sash and a revolver in each hand. He was so pale that his olive face seemed almost a pea-green, and a black crust upon his cruel lips showed the extent of his potations in the cabin. He glanced into the binnacle, and perceiving that the brig was still being steered her old course, he cried, in a hoarse voice: "Hombres, allegarse a la cuesta!" (men, bear toward the land) and pointing to the direction in which he knew the vast continent of South America Am-erica from which we were probably four or five hundred miles distant must be, he added orders in English to shape the brig's course due west, and stamped his right foot on the deck to give his words additional force. (To be continued.) |