"What will they do with him?" said the captain, going to the companion and resting his hand upon it as though in a moment he would descend. "I am wondering, sir," answered Hardy, who stood near. "I should not like to be in the power of that bo'sun after I had killed his brother." "Death drugs revenge; I would not kill my enemy," said the captain, putting on one of those incommunicable looks which always alarmed Hardy with thoughts of the ship's safety. "I would keep my brother's murderer alive--at sea. There is the middle-watch and the ghastly face of the moon! Whispers aloft and God's eye in every star! The ghostly figure should walk the quarter-deck with the assassin, should enter his berth with him, and sit beside his bunk and watch him. That is the revenge that kills the soul--the very thought makes me sweat." His face changed into an expression of agitation, and with a sudden hurry he disappeared down the companion-steps. Hardy watched the French boat draw alongside the barque. He wondered that the captain should have left the deck at such a time; it was another illustration of his insanity, no doubt. "He has gone to see to little Johnny, perhaps," the mate thought, what had happened having faded in the chaotic muddle of his reason. Here was Captain Layard, who was determined to make a swift passage, keeping his ship hove to and going below to talk to his bright-haired boy, to help him dress maybe, and to muse in lopsided moralising over the medicine chest. He took the glass, and levelled it at the barque, and saw the boat slowly ascending in spasmodic jerks to the davits. A few men dragged at the falls, and upon the port quarter of the poop the rest of the ship's company apparently had assembled, and were clearly discussing the recapture of the mate with the heat and passion of the French when excited. They gesticulated, they surged and reeled, and Hardy again saw one or another of them fling his hand in the direction of the fore yard-arm. He could not see if the mate stood amongst them, and all forward was vacant deck, pulsating with the shadow of swinging sail. There was nothing else in sight all away round the girdle of the deep, though this was a frequented sea; and the two vessels, to a distant eye, might have seemed abandoned, so aimless was the look they got from the white cloths incurving to the masts.