The skipper turned, struck down the hook, and snarled upon him. “Shut up, Murchison!” he cried. “I'm still the captain, if ye please, and I ken as much about the clerk here as will keep his gab shut on any trifle we hae dune.” I looked upon the clean sea, and then at that huddle of scoundrels in the Kirkcaldy boat, and then upon the seaman Horn coming back again to the full consciousness of his impending fate. He gazed upon me with eyes alarmed and pitiful, and at that I formed my resolution. “I stick by Horn,” said I. “If he gets too, I'll go; if not I'll bide and be drowned with an honest man.” “Bide and be damned then! Ye've had your chance,” shouted Risk, letting his boat fall off. “It's time we werena here.” And the halliards of his main-sail were running in the blocks as soon as he said it. The boat swept away rapidly, but not before I gave him a final touch of my irony. From my pocket I took out my purse and threw it upon his lap. “There's the ither twa, Risk,” I cried; “it's no' like the thing at all to murder a harmless lad for less than what ye bargained for.” He bawled back some reply I could not hear, and I turned about, to see Horn making for the small boat on the starboard chocks. I followed with a hope again wakened, only to share his lamentation when he found that two of her planks had been wantonly sprung from their clinkers, rendering her utterly useless. The two other boats were in a similar condition; Risk and his confederates had been determined that no chance should be left of our escape from the _Seven Sisters_. It was late in the afternoon. The wind had softened somewhat; in the west there were rising billowy clouds of silver and red, and half a mile away the Kirkcaldy boat, impatient doubtless for the end of us, that final assurance of safety, plied to windward with only her foresail set. We had gone below in a despairing mind on the chance that the leakage might be checked, but the holes were under water in the after peak, and in other parts we could not come near. An inch-and-a-half auger, and a large bung-borer, a gouge and chisel in the captain's private locker, told us how the crime had been committed whereof we were the victims. We had come on deck again, the pair of us, without the vaguest notion of what was next to do, and--speaking for myself--convinced that nothing could avert our hurrying fate. Horn told me later that he proposed full half a score of plans for at least a prolongation of our time, but that I paid no heed to them. That may be, for I know the ballad stanza went in my head like a dirge, as I sat on a hatch with the last few days of my history rolling out before my eyes. The dusk began to fall like a veil, the wind declined still further. Horn feverishly hammered and caulked at the largest of the boats, now and then throwing the tools from him as in momentary realisations of the hopelessness of his toil that finally left him in despair.