The sailor’s extraordinary speech left me in no doubt that the attempt to seize the ship would be made, and soon. Not a hint of anything wrong, of anything brewing, was to be discovered. Never had the ship worn a quieter, peacefuller face as she floated along this morning over the smooth, light blue of the tropic sea, bathed in the early silver sunshine, her canvas gleaming like silk, softly lifting and hollowing, and all right with her save that splintered masthead. They were washing down the poop; I saw Will and others hard at work with their scrubbing-brushes; a sentry stood at the head of each ladder, and the captain was now on deck looking up at the injured mast and talking about it with the ship’s carpenter. A single sentry, as heretofore, stood at the quarter-deck gate, another at the main-hatch door, a third on the forecastle; thus the decks were guarded by five armed soldiers, as usual. Those who were off duty lounged with the women and a few children near the booby-hatch, waiting to get their breakfast. The convict cooks were at work in their galley, as I might guess from the smoke which blew from its chimney. The fate of the ship was in my hands--her fate and the lives and fortunes of a crowd of people! A fierce, wild pride, a wicked exultation swelled my heart. There was yet time! The captain was on the poop; I had but to measure the length of the deck to acquaint him with what I knew, and the ship would be saved. And sooner than speak, I would have killed myself. The blood would be on the heads of those who had unjustly sentenced and made a convict and a broken-hearted, ruined man of my sweetheart. Whatever devil had been driven into him was in me too; what he did I would do; what he wished would be my law; let the change that had been worked in him be as frightful as you please, I would lay down my life that he might get his liberty and escape the horrors of the base and degrading term of servitude which he was to complete in a distant land. Yes, I could have saved the ship by whispering a single sentence in the captain’s ear, and had a knife been put into my hand, and had I been compelled either to speak or to stab my heart, I vow to God I would have sheathed the knife in my breast without an instant’s hesitation. I was not more than five minutes upon the forecastle. Then drawing a bucket of water, I went aft. Captain Barrett and Lieutenant Chimmo, as was their habit in these sultry latitudes, quitted their cabins in their dressing-gowns for a bath in the ship’s head. This refreshing bath they obtained by standing under the pump, whilst their orderlies, as I suppose you would call the soldiers who waited upon them, plied the handle. They returned in twenty minutes, and disappeared in their cabins to dress.