Then at once they reached and hovered upon the imminent verge
of sleep--but an intruder came, now, that would not "down." It was
conscience. They began to feel a vague fear that they had been doing
wrong to run away; and next they thought of the stolen meat, and then
the real torture came. They tried to argue it away by reminding
conscience that they had purloined sweetmeats and apples scores of
times; but conscience was not to be appeased by such thin
plausibilities; it seemed to them, in the end, that there was no
getting around the stubborn fact that taking sweetmeats was only
"hooking," while taking bacon and hams and such valuables was plain
simple stealing--and there was a command against that in the Bible. So
they inwardly resolved that so long as they remained in the business,
their piracies should not again be sullied with the crime of stealing.
Then conscience granted a truce, and these curiously inconsistent
pirates fell peacefully to sleep.
CHAPTER XIV
WHEN Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around.
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