Prisoners of Chance

There was a slight movement beneath, as if he drew closer to where I was.

"Yes, it is all right," he returned, his voice so modulated as to be barely audible. "But I discover nothing in this darkness to aid in reaching the deck. Know you where a rope can be secured?"

"Ay; lie quiet until I return."

It was a bit ticklish, yet required doing. A trip to the foremast put in my possession quite a section of line sliced from off the rope's end previously left dangling from the upper yard. Incidentally as I passed back and forth I revisited Father Cassati, still resting easily in his bonds, but now peacefully sleeping off his earlier potations undiscovered upon the hard deck. Returning with my treasure, I payed it out into the intense blackness of the cuddy hole, and anxiously awaited developments below.

Nor had I long to wait--there came a touch on the line followed by a firmer pull, as if the party below tested its strength. For a moment the cord wiggled about as if the man was working with his end to some purpose, then there followed three sharp jerks which I interpreted to mean to hoist away. I promptly put my full strength to it, bracing both feet firmly against a heavy cross-piece of timber, evidently nailed there for that very purpose. The rope ran over a small roller set close against the coaming, which I had failed to observe in my hasty search, so I found the strain less than expected, although a heavy weight was evidently attached to the other end. But I uplifted this, for I was vain of my strength in those days, and the distance was not so great but that shortly his hands managed to grip hold upon the deck planks, and a moment later he stood beside me, complacent and debonair as ever, in the dense shadows of the galley.

"Sacre! 'tis a most scurvy trick we are playing on the Dons, friend Benteen," he murmured smiling easily, while peering about him in the darkness. "And now, what is the next act in this midnight melodrama, most cautious youth?"

"The keeping of a still tongue until we are both overboard," I replied somewhat roughly. "Follow me closely, and keep quiet about it, if you retain the slightest care for your life."

It was not much of a trick, the rest of it, and within five minutes we were silently floating down the great river, through the darkness, seeking after some quiet landing-place below the fleet.