Then all was silence and darkness save where the movement of an oar sculling over the stern made the water flash and gleam with phosphorescence, and raised up ripples of pale lambent, golden light. "Who's that?" said Mark, in a whisper. "On'y me, sir," replied a familiar voice, in company with a smothered groan. "Tom Fillot?" "Ay, ay, sir," came back dismally. "I've got us out o' reach o' that pig o' ballast." "But, Tom," cried Mark, excitedly, "what does it mean? Where's Mr Russell?" "Somewheres underneath you, sir. I think you're a-sitting on him." "There's someone lying here," cried Mark. "Yes, sir, several someuns," said Tom Fillot. "Oh, my poor head!" "But you don't tell me what it all means," cried Mark, angrily. "Didn't know as it wanted no telling on, sir. Thought you knowed." "But I know nothing. I was roused up, dragged out of the cabin, and thrown down into the boat." "Yes, sir; so was we, and not very gently, nayther." "Then the--" began Mark, but he did not finish. "That's it, sir. You've hit it. The Yankee captain come back from up the river somewhere in his boat as quiet as you please, and the first I knowed on it was that it was dark as pitch as I leaned my back against the bulwarks, and stood whistling softly, when--_bang_, I got it on the head, and as I went down three or four of 'em climbed aboard. `What's that? You there, Fillot?' I heered in a dull sort o' way, and then the poor lufftenant went down with a groan, and same moment I hears a scrufflin' forrard and aft, cracks o' the head, and falls. Minute arter there was a row going on in the fo'c's'le. I heered that plain, sir, and wanted to go and help my mates, but when I was half up, seemed as if my head begun to spin like a top, and down I went again, and lay listening to the row below. There was some fighting, and I heered Joe Dance letting go awful. My, he did swear for a minute, and then he was quiet, and there was a bit o' rustling, and I hears a voice say, `Guess that's all. Show the light.' Then there seemed to me to be a light walking about the deck with a lot o' legs, and I knowed that they were coming round picking up the pieces. Sure enough they was, sir, and they pitched all the bits of us overboard into a boat alongside; and I knowed we hadn't half kept our watch, and the Yankee skipper had come back and took his schooner." "Oh, Tom Fillot!" groaned Mark. "And was that all?" "No, sir; for I heered the skipper say, `Anyone been in the cabin?' And when no one spoke he began to cuss 'em for a set o' idgits, and they all went below with the lanthorn, and come up again along o' you. My word, Mr Vandean, sir, how you must have slep'!" "Oh, Tom Fillot!" cried Mark again. "Yes, and it is `Oh, Tom Fillot,' sir," groaned the poor fellow. "My skull's cracked in three or four places sure as a gun." "And the others. Oh! the others. Are they killed?"