Jack Harkaway and His Son's Escape from the Brigands of Greece Part 110

"Jack Tiller," said he.

"Your honour."

"I'll stay where I am."

"Oh, very good," replied the tar; "mum's the word. I thought your berth wasn't over cheerful."

Jack Tiller gave a hoist at his slacks, and with something between a sigh and a grunt, he wheeled round and went on deck.

"If I could only see my way out of this, I should like better than any thing to fire the s.h.i.+p," said Hunston, to himself; "fire it and watch it close by, chuckling at them while they roasted. What a glorious return it would be for them. By the powers, it is about the only thing I could do to wipe them all off at once, all, all! Jack, Harvey, Emily, that Yankee braggart--curse him!"

And Hunston sat brooding in the black and evil-smelling hold day after day.

The only companion of his solitude being his own dark thoughts, his vicious resolves for vengeance.

"It is my own cursed ill-luck," he would say to himself again and again, "to be beholden to this Harkaway for my life. Why, even now, he has saved me again, saved me in spite of himself. That's the merry side of the question."

Merry as it was, it never made him smile.

One dreadful thought filled his poor mind.

One fearful fancy took such complete possession of him, that day and night he was brooding on it.

"Once let me see a clear landing," he would mutter to himself, "once let me see my way straight to get ash.o.r.e in a safe place, and then I'll make the 'Westward Ho!' too hot to hold them. Too hot--ah, yes, a precious deal too hot to hold them, that I would; for I would make up such a blaze as they would never be able to extinguish."

And so he began devoting himself to the arrangements for this villainous purpose.

What is more, he got all his plans mapped out, all ready for the execution of this most diabolical deed.

Little did the happy pa.s.sengers in the "Westward Ho!" dream of the fatal danger threatening them.

They would not have enjoyed so many sweet slumbers, could they have had the faintest inkling of the truth--if they had suspected that near them was the villain Hunston, following them with a deadly purpose of revenge, which seemed to have increased year by year ever since the schooldays of Jack Harkaway.

CHAPTER XLI.

YOUNG JACK'S CONFIDENCES--HOW TWO INNOCENT CONSPIRATORS REPENTED--A CHANCE SHOT STRIKES HOME.

"Harry," said young Jack, as they walked up and down the deck arm in arm, "I must tell you something that has been upon my mind for days past."

Harry Girdwood turned round. Young Jack's serious manner impressed him.

"What is it, Jack?"

"I know you'll laugh," began Jack.

"Do you, Jack?" returned Harry Girdwood, promptly; "that being the case, tell me at once. I like to laugh, as you know."

"Well, Harry, it hasn't made me laugh. I was lolling half drowsily over the hatchway there, the other evening, when I suppose I dropped off asleep, and I dreamt of Hunston. I dreamt that I was going through all that ugly scene again, and while in the thick of the dream, something woke me."

"Yes."

"What do you think it was?"

"Can't say."

"Hunston's voice, moaning, groaning with pain apparently."

Harry Girdwood opened his eyes in wonder at this singular speech.

"What are you talking about?"

"Nonsense, rubbish; is it not? So I thought since. But you know that sort of dream when you wake up with the vivid effect of your vision so strongly upon you, that the dream-drama appears to continue after you're awake?"

"Yes."

"Well, that is exactly what happened to me. I heard Hunston when I was awake."

There was something strangely impressive in his manner as he said this, which caught Harry Girdwood's attention in spite of himself.

"Fancy," he said, with an a.s.sumption of indifference which he was far from feeling; "fancy, my dear Jack."

"Of course," answered young Jack; "but very strange."

"Not exactly strange, either, every thing considered, after all we have gone through. Why, Jack, you will hardly believe me when I tell you that I scarcely sleep without dreaming of Hunston. And what is there wonderful in that, after all that has taken place? It was enough to shake the strongest nerves, to startle the bravest man that ever lived."

"You allude to the attempted execution of ourselves?" said young Jack.

"Yes; and in spite of that brave brigand girl's a.s.surances, there was great danger when we stood upon the brink of our grave with a firing party aiming at us."

"I felt a good deal of confidence in her," said Jack, "but I couldn't help thinking that an accident in her calculations might happen very easily."

"That's true. Supposing one of the bullets had been left in?"

"Why, then one of us would have been food for worms by now, unless the wolves or bears had rooted us up out of our graves and made dinner off us; but I haven't told you all about my vision yet, Harry."

"Did you dream again?"

"No."

"What more have you, then, to tell? Out with it. What else was it?"

"The moans I heard grew more distinct while I listened, and I followed the sounds--"