I could
plan nothing; though I would get mad, feverish fits of thinking.
"Do you hear?" he said. He was almost crying.
"Yes, Tammy," I replied. "But I don't know! I _don't_ know!"
"You don't know!" he exclaimed. "You don't know! Do you mean we're just
to give in, and be murdered, one after another?"
"We've done all we can," I replied. "I don't know what else we can do,
unless we go below and lock ourselves in, every night."
"That would be better than this," he said. "There'll be no one to go
below, or anything else, soon!"
"But what if it came on to blow?" I asked. "We'd be having the sticks
blown out of her."
"What if it came on to blow _now_?" he returned. "No one would go aloft,
if it were dark, you said, yourself! Besides, we could shorten her
_right_ down, first. I tell you, in a few days there won't be a chap
alive aboard this packet unless they jolly well do something!"
"Don't shout," I warned him. "You'll have the Old Man hearing you." But
the young beggar was wound up, and would take no notice.
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