exertion and anger, lay bound hand and foot upon the cabin floor.
To Charity the whole episode began to seem like a terrible nightmare. She wanted to scream and found that her voice was gone. She wanted to go to Young Cy's help, although she really could have been of no assistance to him, and it seemed as though her limbs had turned to stone. She could only stand there uttering little anguished cries that dwindled into stifled sobs.
Then Captain Jaffray made a curt gesture and the men disappeared obediently, stumbling up the hatch. The captain seated himself calmly.
"Now, young Master Jones," he said, a cruel twist to his lips, "perhaps ye will listen to reason a trifle more patiently than before!"
"Oh, sir!" began Charity, starting forward. But Captain Jaffray turned so ferociously upon her that she cowered back into silence.
"Now, Master Jones," continued Captain Jaffray, as though he had not been interrupted, "ye can take your choice! Either ye can tell me all ye know concerning the 'Jersey Blues' or" he paused significantly and even innocent Charity shuddered. Faint but terrible rumors of the English prisons in New York, worse of the English prison ships where the patriots were treated and killed off like so many cattle, had reached Newark and the mountain settlement. One member of the mountain colony had already lost his life aboard one of the prison ships anchored in the East River, while another had escaped home, only to
