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Here and all at once Adam started up as again there came a soft knocking at the door. "Who's there?" he cried. And then in my ear, "'Tis she, Martin, as I guess, though sooner than I had expected into the bilboes with you." Thus whispering and with action incredibly quick, he clapped and locked me back in my shackles, whisked food, platter and bottle into a dark corner and crossed to the door.
Fletcher, the chaplain, who secretly advocated the dead man's cause, was tied to a mast pole in bilboes, with the inscription hung to his neck "Falsest knave that liveth." On August 17 they departed from "the port accursed," for the Straits of Magellan, that were to lead to Spanish wealth on the Pacific.
Petty insurrections, such as complaints of the quality or quantity of the food, etc., were punished by the bilboes. The bilboes were iron bars fixed to the deck a little abaft the main-mast. The prisoner sat upon the deck under a sentry, and his legs and hands were shackled to the bars with irons of a weight proportioned to the crime. It was a rule that none should speak to a man in the bilboes.
Oh, the intolerable Shame and Disgrace! that Jack Dangerous, who had been All Round the World with that Renowned Commander, Captain Blokes, and had Chased, Taken, and Plundered many a good tall ship belonging to the Spaniards, ay, and had landed on their Main, Spoiled their Cities and Settlements, Toasted their fine Ladies, and held their Chief Governors to Ransom, should be laid in the Bilboes by a Rascally African Pirate Vessel mounting Nine Guns, and belonging to the most Heathenish, Knavish, and Bloodthirsty Town of Algiers.
Stocking, tis fresher and livelier than any Hollands youll get in Garnsey. But well send a hand over and ask the woman for a taste, for Im so jammed in these here bilboes that I begin to want summat to lighten my upper works.
'Tis me, messmate, old Resolution, friend, come to loose thy bilboes, for fair is fair. Ha, 'tis plaguey dark, the pit o' Acheron ain't blacker, where d'ye lay speak soft for there's ears a-hearkening very nigh us." In the dark a hand touched me and then I felt the muzzle of a pistol at my throat. "No tricks, lad no running for't if I loose ye you'll bide here come life, come death? Is't agreed?"
"Hist, father! 'tis only me Adam." "A' right! a' right!" stammered Zebedee, too dazed to take in the whole matter at once. "What is it, lad, eh? They darned galoots ha'n't a tracked 'ee, have 'em? By the hooky! but they'm givin' 't us hot and strong this time, Adam: they was trampin' 'bout inside here a minit agone, tryin' to keep our sperrits up by a-rattlin' the bilboes in our ears.
"No, Martin, no except when first I clapped eyes on you, she chanced to be lying in your arms, d'ye see?" "Tush!" said I. "What o' that? 'Twas after she'd set the ship afire and sought to murder Don Federigo; we left her in the 'tween-decks and I found her nigh stifled by the smoke. Have you got her fast in the bilboes safe under lock and key?" "Lord love you no.
So, while one of his masters was contemplating the stars from the mast-head, the destroyer of reefers' kits had nothing else to do but to contemplate the beauty of his own feet, placed, with a judicious exactitude, in a very handsome pair of bilboes under the half deck. When fully secured, the poor wretch sent for me.
For three wild lads were we, brave boys, And three wild lads were we; Thou on the land, and I on the sand, And Jack on the gallows-tree! That's it, my bully-boy! Why, you're alive again now! And now let us talk about our business. 'YOUR business, if you please, said Hatteraick. 'Hagel and donner! mine was done when I got out of the bilboes.
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