Martin Conisby
Page 55I was yet upon my knees when came Job the quartermaster with two men who, at his command, dragged me to my feet and out upon deck; cursing my hampering fetters, they tumbled me down the quarter-ladder and so down into the waist of the ship.
Now as I went I kept my eyes upraised to the serene majesty of the heavens; the moon rode high amid a glory of stars, and as I looked it seemed I had never seen them so bright and wonderful, never felt the air so good and sweet upon my lips.
Being come to the fore-hatchway I checked there, despite my captors' buffets and curses, to cast a final, long look up, above and round about me, for I had a sudden uneasy feeling, a dreadful suspicion that once I descended into the gloom below I never should come forth alive. So I stared eagerly upon these ever-restless waters, so bright beneath the moon, upon the white sands of Deliverance Beach, on lofty palmetto and bush-girt cliff and then, shivering despite all my resolution, I suffered them to drag me down into that place of shadows.
I remember a sharp, acrid smell, the reek of bilge and thick, mephitic air as I stumbled on betwixt my captors through this foul-breathing dimness until a door creaked, yawning suddenly upon a denser blackness, into which I was thrust so suddenly that I fell, clashing my fetters, and lying thus, heard the door slammed and bolted.
So here lay I in sweating, breathless expectation of I knew not what, my ears on the stretch, my manacled hands tight-clenched and every nerve a-tingle with this dreadful uncertainty. For a great while it seemed I lay thus, my ears full of strange noises, faint sighings, unchancy rustlings and a thousand sly, unaccountable sounds that at first caused me direful apprehensions but which, as I grew more calm, I knew for no more than the flow of the tide and the working of the vessel's timbers as she strained at her anchors. All at once I sat up, crouching in the dark, as from somewhere about me, soft yet plain to hear, came a sound that told me some one was stealthily drawing the bolts of the door. Rising to my feet I stood, shackled fists clenched, ready to leap and smite so soon as chance should offer. Then came a hissing whisper: "Easy all, brother! Soft it is, comrade! 'Tis me, messmate, old Resolution, friend, come to loose thy bilboes, for fair is fair. Ha, 'tis plaguey dark, the pit o' Acheron ain't blacker, where d'ye lay--speak soft for there's ears a-hearkening very nigh us."