CHAPTER XXI
THE BO'SUN'S STORY
NOTHING happened, sir, for some hour or so after you left, and then things made up for lost time, as 'twere, and came fast and quick. I was sitting outside this here room with the door on the jar—outside I was, 'cos I couldn't bear the sight of that schoolmaster's face. I think you'll own yourself, sir, that it wasn't just exactly wot you might call 'a pleasant evening face' especially, a-battered about as it was. Poor Bill Spiker and Morgan Walters here was asleep downstairs, for we'd agreed that I should stand first watch.
"Well, the boys had brought us over our allowance of rum from the barn, and we'd all had a drop, though I kept most of mine to the end of my watch, thinking to use it for a nightcap, as 'twere, but the little drop I did get was making me feel very drowsy, and I began to think the next hour would never go, when I could wake up Bill Spiker. Presently I hears a noise of galloping horses. I goes to the window on the stairs there, and looks out. Right along the road I could see those same riders with lit-up faces wot I'd seed the night before
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