He now did the best thing he could have done,--burst into a roar of laughter.

"Zooks!" he cried.

"It's as good a comedy as ever I saw! How's the play to end, captain?
Are we to go off laughing, or is the end to be bloody after all?
For instance, is there murder to be done ?" He looked at me boldly, one hand on his hip, the other twirling his mustaches.
"We are not all murderers, my lord," I told him.

"For the present you are in no danger other than that which is common to us all." He looked at the clouds piling behind us, thicker and thicker, higher and higher, at the bending mast, at the black water swirling now and again over the gunwales.

"It's enough," he muttered.
I beckoned to Diccon, and putting the tiller into his hands went forward to reef the sail.