go on deck!' suddenly exclaimed Helga.

'You?' cried I. 'No, indeed! You will remain here. There must be two of us for them to deal with before the third can be come at!'

'I will go on deck!' she repeated. 'I have less cause to fear them than you. They know that I am acquainted with navigation—they have always looked at me with kindness in their faces. Let me go and talk to them!'

She made a step to the door—I gripped her arm, and brought her to my side and held her.

'What is to be done is for us two men to do!' said I. 'We must think, and we must wait.'

'Let me go!' she cried. 'They will listen to me, and I shall be able to make terms. Unless there be a navigator among them, what can they do with the ship in this great ocean?' She struggled, crying again: 'Let me go to them, Hugh!'

'Dorn't you do nothen of the sort, sir!' exclaimed Abraham. 'What'd happen? They'd tarn to and lock her up until they'd made an end of you and me, and then she'd be left alone aboard this wessel—alone, I mean, with eleven yaller savages. Gor' preserve us! If you let go of her, sir, Oi shall have to stop the road.'

There was something of deliberateness in his speech: his English spirit was coming back with the weakening of the horror that had filled him when he first came rushing below.

Someone knocked lightly on the door. At the same instant my eye was taken by the glance of lamp or candle flame in the opening in the bulkhead overlooking the narrow passage.

'Hush!' cried I.

The knock was repeated. It was a very soft tapping, as though made by a timid knuckle.

'Who is there?' I shouted, gathering myself together with a resolution to leap upon the first dark throat that showed; for I believed this soft knocking—this soundless approach—a Malay ruse, and my veins tingled with the madness that enters the blood of a man in the supreme moment whose expiry means life or death to him.

'It is me, master! Open, master! It is allee right!'

'That's Nakier!' exclaimed Abraham.

'Who is it?' I cried.

'Me, sah—Nakier. It is allee right, I say. Do not fear. Our work is done. We wish to speakee with you, and be friend.'

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