"Will you swear on the Book to do your duty by Skipper Simms an' me if we take you back?" asked Ward.
"You bet," answered Bony Sawyer.
The others nodded their heads, and Divine sprang up and started down toward Ward.
"Hol' on you!" commanded the mate. "This here arrangement don' include you--it's jes' between Skipper Simms an' his sailors. You're a rank outsider, an' you butts in an' starts a mutiny. Ef you come back you gotta stand trial fer that--see?" "You better duck, mister," advised Red Sanders; "they'll hang you sure."
Divine went white. To face trial before two such men as Simms and Ward meant death, of that he was positive. To flee into the forest meant death, almost equally certain, and much more horrible. The man went to his knees, lifting supplicating hands to the mate.
"For God's sake, Mr. Ward," he cried, "be merciful. I was led into this by Theriere. He lied to me just as he did to the men. You can't kill me--it would be murder--they'd hang you for it."
"We'll hang for this muss you got us into anyway, if we're ever caught," growled the mate. "Ef you hadn't a-carried the girl off to be murdered we might have had enough ransom money to have got clear some way, but now you gone and cooked the whole goose fer the lot of us."
"You can collect ransom on me," cried Divine, clutching at a straw. "I'll pay a hundred thousand myself the day you set me down in a civilized port, safe and free."
Ward laughed in his face.
"You ain't got a cent, you four-flusher," he cried. "Clinker put us next to that long before we sailed from Frisco."
"Clinker lies," cried Divine. "He doesn't know anything about it--I'm rich."
"Wot's de use ob chewin' de rag 'bout all dis," cried Blanco, seeing where he might square himself with Ward and Simms easily. "Does yo' take back all us sailormen, Mr. Ward, an' promise not t' punish none o' us, ef we swear to stick by yo' all in de future?"
"Yes," replied the mate.
Blanco took a step toward Divine.
"Den yo come along too as a prisoner, white man," and the burly black grasped Divine by the scruff of the neck and forced him before him down the steep trail toward the cove, and so the mutineers returned to the command of Skipper Simms, and L. Cortwrite Divine went with them as a prisoner, charged with a crime the punishment for which has been death since men sailed the seas.