HOW I FACED DEATHS AND LIVED On the sixteenth day of my imprisonment I had stood against my bars till the last faint glow of the sunset faded off a white cloud in the east, and all outside had become gray and dim, and my room was quite dark.

I had had my second meal, and looked as usual for no further diversion till breakfast next morning.

But of a sudden I heard heavy feet outside my door, and Torode came in with a lantern, followed by two of his men.
"You are still of that mind ?" he asked, as though we had discussed the matter but five minutes before.
"Yes." "Then your time is up;" and at a word from him the men bound my hands and feet as before, tied a cloth over my eyes, and carried me off along the rocky way--to my death I doubted not.
To the schooner first in any case, though why they could not kill a man on shore as easily as at sea surprised me.

Though, to be sure, a man's body is more easily and cleanly disposed of at sea than on shore, and leaves no mark behind it.
I was placed in the same bunk as before, and fell asleep wondering how soon the end of this strange business would come, but sure that it would not be long.
I was wakened in the morning by the crash of the big guns, and surmised that we had run across something.

I heard answering guns and more discharges of our own, then the lowering of a boat, and presently my porthole was obscured as the schooner ground against another vessel.
Then the unexpected happened, in a furious fusillade of small arms from the other ship.