He lies between those two cloth bales." Ephraim Savage looked up with a smile playing about the corners of his grim mouth.

The wind was whistling now in the rigging, and the stays of the mast were humming like two harp strings.

Amos Green lounged beside the French sergeant who guarded the end of the rope ladder, while Tomlinson, the mate, stood with a bucket of water in his hand exchanging remarks in very bad French with the crew of the boat beneath him.
The officer made his way slowly down the ladder which led into the hold, and the corporal followed him, and had his chest level with the deck when the other had reached the bottom.

It may have been something in Ephraim Savage's face, or it may have been the gloom around him which startled the young Frenchman, but a sudden suspicion flashed into his mind.
"Up again, corporal!" he shouted, "I think that you are best at the top." "And I think that you are best down below, my friend," said the Puritan, who gathered the officer's meaning from his gesture.

Putting the sole of his boot against the man's chest he gave a shove which sent both him and the ladder crashing down on to the officer beneath him.