"'Tarn't no joke, sir," cried Tom Fillot. "I'm sorry as you are, for they were getting to be two good messmates. They'd on'y got minds like a couple o' boys, but the way in which they took to their chew o' 'baccy was wonderful to behold." "The men must have overlooked them," cried Mark. "They were below asleep." "Nay, sir, they didn't care to go below. They was both asleep curled up forrard under the bulwarks. They'd had so much being below, that they shied at going down a hatchway." "Then what do you think about them, Tom?" cried Mark, excitedly. There was no reply. "Why don't you answer, man?" "Didn't like to tell you, sir," said Tom Fillot, quietly. "Tell me what you are thinking at once." "Well, sir, I thinks same as my mates do here. Them piratical sharks o' slavers didn't dare to be too hard on us because they knowed if they was ketched arterwards it meant a bit o' hemp round the neck, and a dance on nothing at all in the air; but when it comes to blacks, they're no more account to them than blackberries as grows on brambles. Strikes me they give them poor chaps a crack o' the head apiece, and knocked 'em down, same as they did we, but they wouldn't take the trouble to carry them and pitch them into a boat. They just chucked them overboard at once." "Oh, impossible!" cried Mark, excitedly. "They could not be such brutes." "What! not them, sir?" cried Tom Fillot, indignantly. "Harkye here, messmates; I says as chaps as'd half kill such a orficer as Mr Russell, who's as fine a gen'leman as ever stepped, 'd murder a King as soon as look at him." "Ay, ay," came in a low growl. "And if any o' you thinks different to my sentiments, let him speak out like a man." "That's what we all think, messmet," came in another growl. "And there you are, sir, and them's fax. They chucked them two pore chaps overboard, and, speaking up for my messmates and self, I says we don't hold with killing nobody 'cept in the name of dooty; but here's a set o' miserable beggars as goes about buying and selling the pore niggers, and treating 'em worse than they would a box o' worms to go fishing with. Why, it's murder, sir, wholesale, retail, and for exportation, as the man said over his shop door in our town o' Bristol, and if we can only get at 'em--well, I won't say what we'll do, but if there ain't some fatal accidents that day, my name ain't Tom." "That's so, messmet--that's so," came in another deep growl. "It's horrible, horrible," groaned Mark; and he bent over Mr Russell's face, and tried to make out whether there was any sign of returning consciousness. "At a time like this, messmets," whispered Tom Fillot to those nearest to him, "I'd be quiet. Mr Vandean's in a deal of trouble about the lufftenant."