I was crouching now under the starboard bulwark, and feeling certain that in another minute I should be found, I passed my hand upward, searched about, and found that which I sought, the mizzen-shrouds. The next minute I had caught well hold with both hands, swung up my feet, and went on inboard hand over hand till I was twenty feet above the deck, clinging there in the darkness, and listening to the efforts made--evidently by three or four men--beneath to find out where I could be gone. CHAPTER TEN. As I clung there in the mizzen-shroud, afraid to stir, hardly daring to breathe lest I should be heard, and puzzled beyond measure as to what it could all mean, but feeling all the same certain that something terrible had happened, and that it was no shipwreck, there was a tremendous kicking and banging at one of the cabin-doors, and up through the sky-light came in smothered tones-- "Here, open this, or I'll kick it off the hinges." "Lie down!" yelled a sharp angry voice from somewhere beneath me, and there was a flash of a pistol, the loud report, and a few moments after the smell of the powder rose to my nostrils. "Jarette," I said to myself, as I recognised the half-French sailor's voice, and then I felt sure that it was Mr Frewen who had shouted from one of the cabins where he must be locked in. "Then it must be a mutiny," I thought, and such a cold paralysing chill ran through me that I felt as if I should drop down on deck. For the recollection of all I had read of such affairs taking place in bygone times flashed through my brain--of officers murdered in cold blood, ships carried off by the crew to unknown islands, and--yes--I was an officer, young as I might be, and if the mutineers caught me they would murder me, as perhaps they had already murdered Captain Berriman and Mr Brymer. I felt giddy then, and the wonder has always been to me that I did not let go and fall. But my fingers were well hooked on to the ropes, and there I hung listening, as after pretty well scouring the deck the men below me stopped, and the voice that I had set down as Jarette's said-- "Well, have you got him?" "No." "Did you feel under the seats?" "Yes; there's no one on this deck." "Did he go overboard?" "No; he must have dodged us and dropped back from the rail." "Who was it? The doctor?" "No; that whipper-snapper of a boy." "Oh, him. Well, then he'd better come out of his hole, wherever he is," said Jarette loudly, speaking in very good English, though with a peculiar accent which sounded to me almost ferocious, as I hung there feeling as if I could not hold on much longer. "Do you hear, boy? Come here, or I'll send a bullet to fetch you." That man was not twenty feet below me, and as I strained my eyes to try and see whether he was watching me and taking aim, a curious creeping sensation ran over my body as if tiny fingers were touching me. "Do you hear?" came in a fierce snarl,--"am I to fire?"