pirates sang and roared and drank, while the silent steward still filled up their glasses and passed the box and the candle round for their tobacco-pipes. Hour after hour the talk became fouler, the voices hoarser, the curses and shoutings more incoherent, until three of the rive had closed their bloodshot eyes and dropped their swimming heads upon the table.
Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the watchful steward, forever filling up his waning glass. From without came the low lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor's chanty from the bark:
"A trader sailed from Stepney town,
Wake her up! Shake her up! Try her with the mainsail!
A trader sailed from Stepney town,
With a keg full of gold and a velvet gown.
Ho, the bully Rover Jack,
Waiting with his yard aback
Out upon the Lowland sea."
The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the shot-rack behind him.
"Captain Sharkey," said Copley Banks, "do you remember the 'Duchess of Cornwall,' which you took and sank three years ago off the Statira shoal?"
"Curse me if I can bear their names in mind," said Sharkey. "We did as many as ten ships a week about that time."
"There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. May be that will bring it back to your mind."
Captain Sharkey leaned back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose jutting upward. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.
"But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried. "How came you to think of it?"
"It was of interest to me," said Copley Banks, "for the woman was my wife and the lads were my only sons."
Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smoldering fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame. He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt. Then he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of rope was cast about him, and in an instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like a wild-cat, and screamed for help.
"Ned!" he yelled. "Ned! Wake up! Here's villainy! Help, Ned, help! "
But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for any voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey was swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and helpless against a powder-barrel, and they gagged him with a handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at them. The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him. He understood that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long and clutched him at last.
The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat elaborate.
First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder-barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor. They piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled in a heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun, and they triced him sitting over the port-hole, with his face about a foot from the muzzle. Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to right or left, and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor's cunning, so that there was no chance that he should work free.
"Now, you bloody devil," said Copley Banks, softly, "you must listen to what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will hear. You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as well.
"To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learned that there was no other way. I've robbed and I have murdered—worse still, I have laughed and lived with you—and all for the one end. And now my time has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the shadow creeping slowly upon you, and the devil waiting for you in the shadow."
Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty over the water:
"Where is the trader of Stepney town?
Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending!
Where is the trader of Stepney town?
His gold's on the capstan, his blood's on his gown,
