"Rebels, turn out your dead!" The inhuman call came down the opened hatches, and the prisoners, stupid with the foul air they had breathed all night, prepared to obey. So many times they had heard the cry that they had grown callous to its coarse brutality. It was the end of September, and the delayed equinoctial storm would soon ravage the coast. For a week the sea-faring folk had been expecting it; and now at last the great gale or the forerunner of it was upon them, for all night the waves had been rolling in from the outside with the sound of thunder. The ship had pitched and tossed and strained at its moorings, while the living freight in its hold prayed that it might break away entirely. The hatches, when lifted, showed no blue sky, but gray clouds and scurrying mist wreaths. The men, coming up out of the hot and fetid air, shivered a little in the stiff breeze on the deck, then opening their mouths, drank it in like wine. The faces of the landsmen had an added ghastliness from seasickness, but they were all bad enough to look upon,--seamen and soldiers alike. In squads of six they took their breakfast, eating by sheer force of resolution what they loathed, that the hunger pains might not gnaw so hard. "How many dead this morning?" demanded the warden. "Two,--Drake and Cowles," answered Jack Bangs. "Nay, there are three, Master Warden," said Peter Ruffin, sadly; "I found Richard Clevering lying stiff and stark beside me when I got up. The bodies are there beside the capstan." The three were stretched upon the deck; the corner of Richard's blanket, as if by accident, fell over the upper part of his face, but the mouth below was blue and drawn. With an exclamation of surprise and sorrow Jack Bangs crossed the deck and, lifting the blanket for a moment, looked at the face beneath. Then, reverently replacing it, he made the sign of the cross above the body, and speaking a few low words to Peter, went away. The warden, who had watched the scene satirically, gave each corpse a shove with his foot, cursing the while. "D--n 'em! had to die the worst day of the month, that the burial might be the more troublesome!" He glanced at them again, gave each another kick, and checked off their names in his book. "Here, fix these hounds up, and cut your work short so they'll be in the ground before the storm breaks." "If you please, may I go in the boat this morning? Clevering was from my town, and I should like to pay him this last respect." "No." Peter knew better than to urge his plea, and so stepped quietly aside. But the warden, noticing the slow motions of one of the men to whom he had beckoned, shouted angrily, "Out of the way there, you infernal snail, or I'll fix you so you'll go in the boat and stay!"