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He was unmistakably fast asleep, and therefore practically at my mercy. But as I had no intention of killing the man, if I could possibly avoid so extreme a measure, I must have the wherewithal to bind him securely, and that could undoubtedly be obtained in the capstan-house.
I quietly emerged from my place of concealment and, once more crouching low among the ferns, crept slowly and with infinite caution toward the somnolent Jose, gradually working my way round until I could just see him clear of the corner of the capstan-house. Some twenty minutes of this work brought me right up to the gable end of the building, from which position I again reconnoitred Jose.
It was a perfect dockyard in miniature, with warehouses, capstan-house, mast house, rigging shed, sail loft in fact every possible requisite for keeping not only one but as many as three or four craft in perfect order. And, from what I saw in passing, I judged that there must be at least fifty men regularly employed about the place!
He volunteered, however, to remain up on watch until all the lights in the pirates' quarter were extinguished, and then to take a good look round the settlement, and call the others when all was quiet; a raid upon the capstan-house being the first thing necessary to enable them to carry out their plans successfully.
But before this could be done the wave had swept past, rushing with a loud thundering roar far up the beach even to the capstan-house, and then rapidly subsiding.
These points settled, the party returned to the bottom of the bay; and Johnson then invited Lance to present himself at eight o'clock that evening in the capstan-house, there to submit his plans for the new schooner to a committee of the pirates for approval.
They waited until all the pirates appeared to have betaken themselves to the capstan-house, and then sallied out in a body upon an exploring expedition up the valley. It was a lovely night, as light as day, the full moon riding high overhead in an unclouded sky, and so flooding the heavens with her silvery light that only a few stars of the first magnitude were visible.
They had been gone about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour when Lance saw the man he sought emerge from the capstan-house and walk hurriedly down toward the beach, where a boat, fully manned, appeared to be awaiting him. A few steps, and Lance was by his side.
The drawings were in fact scarcely ready; but by working hard for the remainder of the day not only were they completed, but the carpenter had also prepared a half-model of the hull by the hour at which the committee was to meet; and, armed with these, Lance, Captain Staunton, and the carpenter duly presented themselves at the capstan-house at eight o'clock.
Here you Tom Poole, Sullivan, Masters" and he glanced his eye round the room, apparently hesitating whom to choose, but gradually picking out, one after the other, all the men who had cast in their lot with our friends "muster your kits and then go up to the capstan-house; you've got to turn-in aboard the battery to-night, my beauties."
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