Kenny, struggling to a seat. "We must save ourselves. Pull on, or we'll be swamped."
"You wretch!" I cried indignantly. "Supposing we had left you to shift for yourself?"
"Shut up, boy, or"
"The lad is right, captain," interrupted Watt Brown. "It was no more to us to save you than it is to save Betts and the rest. Remember, the Dart has been abandoned and now one man is as good as another."
"Do you mean to say I am not still in command?" roared Captain Kenny in a fury that was positively silly.
"No, you're not!" spoke up one of the men at the oars. "Sit still, or I'll be in for heaving you overboard again," and this was said so harshly that the captain sunk back without another word.
The long hours of the night which followed were filled with an anxiety which words cannot describe. The sailors at the oars could do nothing but keep the small boat head up to the waves and at times they became so exhausted, as the sea ran stronger and stronger, that more than one was ready to drop in a faint. I took an oar for two hours and then had to relinquish the blade, for fear it would be torn from my grasp and lost.
It was about five o'clock in the morning when
