How I Fought In The Dark With One Pompey, A Great Blackamoor

So here lay I in sweating, breathless expectation of I knew not what, my ears on the stretch, my manacled hands tight-clenched and every nerve a-tingle with this dreadful uncertainty. For a great while it seemed I lay thus, my ears full of strange noises, faint sighings, unchancy rustlings and a thousand sly, unaccountable sounds that at first caused me direful apprehensions but which, as I grew more calm, I knew for no more than the flow of the tide and the working of the vessel's timbers as she strained at her anchors. All at once I sat up, crouching in the dark, as from somewhere about me, soft yet plain to hear, came a sound that told me some one was stealthily drawing the bolts of the door. Rising to my feet I stood, shackled fists clenched, ready to leap and smite so soon as chance should offer. Then came a hissing whisper: "Easy all, brother! Soft it is, comrade! 'Tis me, messmate, old Resolution, friend, come to loose thy bilboes, for fair is fair. Ha, 'tis plaguey dark, the pit o' Acheron ain't blacker, where d'ye lay--speak soft for there's ears a-hearkening very nigh us."

In the dark a hand touched me and then I felt the muzzle of a pistol at my throat.

"No tricks, lad--no running for't if I loose ye--you'll bide here--come life, come death? Is't agreed?"

"It is!" I whispered. Whereupon and with no more ado, he freed me from my gyves, making scarcely any sound, despite the dark.