But the others were discussing the fate of our prisoners. I heard Roger say, "Let me look at them, Mr. Cledd. I'll know them--some of them anyway. Ah, Captain Falk? And the carpenter? Well, well, well! We hadn't dared hope for the pleasure of your company on the return voyage. In fact, we'd quite given it up. I may add that we'd reconciled ourselves to the loss of it." I now edged toward them, followed by the cook. "Ay, Mr. Hamlin, it's all very well for you to talk like that," Falk replied in a trembling voice from which all arrogance had not yet vanished. "I'm lawful master of this here vessel, as you very well know. You're nothing but a mutineer and a pirate. Go ahead and kill me! Why don't you? You know I can tell a story that will send you to the gallows. What have I done, but try to get back the owners' property and defend it? To think that I could have knocked you and that addle-pated Ben Lathrop on the head any day I wished! And I wished it, too, but Kipping he said--" Falk stopped suddenly. "So Kipping had a finger in the pie, did he?" said Roger. "Well, Mr. Falk, what did Kipping say?" Falk bit his lip sullenly and remained silent. There really was something pathetic in the man's plight. He had been ambitious, and ambition alone, which often is a virtue, had gone far to contribute to his downfall. In many ways he was so weak! A quality that in other men might have led to almost anything good, in him had bred resentment and trickery and at last downright crime. He stood there now, ruined in his profession, the leader of a defeated band of criminals and vagabonds. Yet if he had succeeded in capturing the ship and putting the rest of us to death, he could have sailed her home to Salem, and by spreading his own version of the mutiny have gained great credit, and probably promotion, for himself. "Well, Chips," said Roger, "I hope you, at least, are pleased with your prospects." The carpenter likewise made no reply. "Hm, Mr. Cledd, they haven't a great deal to say, have they?" "Aha," the negro murmured just behind me, "dey's got fine prospec's, dey has. Dey's gwine dance, dey is, yass, sah, on de end of a rope, and after dey's done dance a while dey's gwine be leetle che'ubs, dey is, and flap dey wings and sing sweet on a golden harp. Yass, sah." The carpenter shot an angry glance at the cook, but no one else paid him any attention. A fire was flaming now on the distant shore. The seas rushed and gurgled along the side of the ship. Our lights dipped with the rigging as the ship rolled and tossed, now lifting her dripping sides high out of water, now plunging them again deep into the trough. "Mr. Cledd, I think we can spare those five men a boat," Roger said, after a time. "You're not going to let them go!" Mr. Cledd exclaimed. "Yes." Mr. Cledd raised his eyebrows, but silently acceded.