But if you use that argument to them when they have taken the vessel, it won't avail you much.

Let me manage, sir; and for God's sake, say nothing to anybody.

Our lives may hang upon a word." Vickers promised, and kept his promise so far as to chat cheerily with Blunt and Frere at dinner, only writing a brief note to his wife to tell her that, whatever she heard, she was not to stir from her cabin until he came to her; he knew that, with all his wife's folly, she would obey unhesitatingly, when he couched an order in such terms.
According to the usual custom on board convict ships, the guards relieved each other every two hours, and at six p.m.the poop guard was removed to the quarter-deck, and the arms which, in the daytime, were disposed on the top of the arm-chest, were placed in an arm-rack constructed on the quarter-deck for that purpose.

Trusting nothing to Frere--who, indeed, by Pine's advice, was, as we have seen, kept in ignorance of the whole matter--Vickers ordered all the men, save those who had been on guard during the day, to be under arms in the barrack, forbade communication with the upper deck, and placed as sentry at the barrack door his own servant, an old soldier, on whose fidelity he could thoroughly rely.

He then doubled the guards, took the keys of the prison himself from the non-commissioned officer whose duty it was to keep them, and saw that the howitzer on the lower deck was loaded with grape.
It was a quarter to seven when Pine and he took their station at the main hatchway, determined to watch until morning.
At a quarter past seven, any curious person looking through the window of Captain Blunt's cabin would have seen an unusual sight.