Lights showed ahead.

Under the great lantern in the prow they saw the black figure of the other sentry, pacing on the forecastle.

From below sounds reached them of the orgy on the gun-deck: a rich male voice was singing an obscene ballad to which the others chanted in chorus: "Y estos son los usos de Castilla y de Leon!" "From what I've seen to-day I can well believe it," said Mr.Blood, and whispered: "Forward--after me." Crouching low, they glided, noiseless as shadows, to the quarter-deck rail, and thence slipped without sound down into the waist.

Two thirds of them were armed with muskets, some of which they had found in the overseer's house, and others supplied from the secret hoard that Mr.
Blood had so laboriously assembled against the day of escape.

The remainder were equipped with knives and cutlasses.
In the vessel's waist they hung awhile, until Mr.Blood had satisfied himself that no other sentinel showed above decks but that inconvenient fellow in the prow.