"Yes, sir," said Mr Brooke, with his brow puckering; "wounded and dead there were, I daresay, thirty; but the enemy set fire to their vessels themselves before they leaped overboard, and it was impossible to save them: they burned like resin. We saved all we could." "I beg your pardon; I might have known," cried the captain warmly. "Come to my cabin. Mr Reardon, be careful with those prisoners; they are savage brutes." "Enough to make 'em, Gnat. Look! What a shame!" I looked, but I could not see any reason for Smith's remark. "Beg pardon, sir," growled one of the men, who had a bandage round his arm; "you wouldn't ha' said so if you'd been there. They was all alike. The junk we took was burning like fat in a frying-pan, and me and my mate see one o' them chaps going to be roasted, and made a run for it and hauled him away--singed my beard, it did; look, sir." Half of his beard was burned off, and his cheek scorched. "Then my mate gets hold of his legs, and I was stooping to get my fists under his chest, when he whips his knife into my arm 'fore I knowed what he was up to. But we saved him all the same." "Here," cried Mr Reardon, as the marines descended from the third boat, and stood at attention in two parties facing each other; "who was answerable for this? Why, it is an outrage. Brutal!" "S'pose it was my doing, sir," said the boatswain, touching his cap; "but I asked leave of Mr Brooke first, and he said yes." "What, to tie the poor wretches up like that, sir, and half of them wounded!" "Beg pardon, sir; there was no other way handy. We lashed their arms behind 'em to keep 'em from knifing us, and then they kept on jumping overboard, and trying to drown themselves. We haven't hurt them." "Cast them loose at once." "Yes, sir; I should like half-a-dozen strong chaps in the boat, though." "Well, take them," said Mr Reardon, who was speaking less severely now. "I'll have the uninjured men in irons this time. Be careful." "And if I'd my way, I'd have 'em all in iron boxes, 'cept their hands." The boatswain said this to me, with a nod, as the first lieutenant turned away, and, unable to control my curiosity, I sprang up on the bulwark to look into the boat. "Let's have a look too," cried Smith, and he jumped up to gain a position much closer than mine, but quitted his hold and dropped back on deck, lost his footing, and came down sitting; for, as he leaned over the boat's gunnel, one of the prisoners made a sudden snap at him, after the fashion of an angry dog, and the marines burst into a roar of laughter. Smith got up scowling and indignant. "My hands slipped," he said to me aloud. And then, to carry off his confusion, "How many are there, Herrick?"