"We surrender," he said.

"It's no use getting our brains blown out." And raising his hands, he obeyed the motion of Vickers's fingers, and led the way towards the barrack.
"Bring the irons forward, there!" shouted Vickers, hastening from his perilous position; and before the last man had filed past the still smoking match, the cling of hammers announced that the Crow had resumed those fetters which had been knocked off his dainty limbs a month previously in the Bay of Biscay.
In another moment the trap-door was closed, the howitzer rumbled back to its cleatings, and the prison breathed again.
* * * * * In the meantime, a scene almost as exciting had taken place on the upper deck.

Gabbett, with the blind fury which the consciousness of failure brings to such brute-like natures, had seized Frere by the throat, determined to put an end to at least one of his enemies.

But desperate though he was, and with all the advantage of weight and strength upon his side, he found the young lieutenant a more formidable adversary than he had anticipated.
Maurice Frere was no coward.

Brutal and selfish though he might be, his bitterest enemies had never accused him of lack of physical courage.
Indeed, he had been--in the rollicking days of old that were gone--celebrated for the display of very opposite qualities.