Chapter Seventeen.
Ricardo the pirate.
I must have slept for at least three hours, and probably much longer, for when I awoke, with a start, I discovered that night had fallen, the cabin lamps were lighted, and a man whom I at once recognised as the pirate captain was leaning over me and gazing at my face with an intentness that was doubtless the cause of my abrupt awakening. As I opened my eyes he started back as though detected in some act of which he felt ashamed; then, recovering himself, he again bent over me, and, to my astonishment, said, in perfect English:
“Well, young gentleman, I hope you are feeling all the better for your long sleep?”
“Thanks, yes,” I said. “At least the intolerable headache from which I was suffering a few hours ago has almost entirely passed away, but this wound in my breast is still exceedingly painful, more so, I think, than when your surgeon patched me up.”
“Ah,” he said, “I am sorry to hear that! Fonseca must come and look at you again. He told me that it was likely to prove troublesome, but if we can avoid gangrene until the ship gets in, I think we shall pull you through all right.”
“It is very kind of you to concern yourself as to my welfare, and also somewhat inexplicable that you should do so,” said I. “You are the captain of this ship, are you not?”
“Yes, for the present,” he answered. “For how long I may be permitted to retain that position is quite another affair. I am given to understand that the men are extremely dissatisfied that I should have spared your life—our motto, you must know, is: ‘Dead men tell no tales’, and we have acted in strict accordance with it thus far, which doubtless accounts for the immunity that we have so long enjoyed. Yours is the first life that I have ever spared.”
“Thank you!” I said. “I suppose I ought to feel very much obliged to you, but somehow I do not. This disaster has absolutely ruined my prospects in the service, so you might just as well have killed me outright. And, by the way, why have you spared me? Your surgeon informed me that you spare only those who join you. I hope you don’t anticipate the possibility that I shall join you?”
My companion laughed heartily, yet there was a slight ring of bitterness methought in his laugh. “No,” he said, “I have not spared you in the hope that you will join us; we have managed thus far to do fairly well without your assistance, and I am sanguine enough to believe that, even should you decline to throw in your lot with us, we shall continue to rub along after a fashion without it. No, that was not my reason for sparing you. By the by, what is your name, if I may presume to ask? It is rather awkward to be entertaining a guest whose name, even, one does not know.”
“My name,” I answered, “is Grenvile—Richard Grenvile, and I am a lieutenant in his Britannic Majesty’s navy.”
“Quite so!” remarked my companion caustically, “I guessed as much from your uniform. You bear a good name, young sir, a very good name. Are you one of the Devon Grenviles?”
“Yes,” I answered, “I am Devon all through, on both sides. My mother was a Carew, which is another good old Devonshire family.”
“Ah!” ejaculated Ricardo, as he called himself, with a quick indrawing of his breath, as though what I had said had hurt him, though how it should have done so was quite inexplicable. “I could have sworn it! Lucy Carew! Boy, you are the living image of your mother! I recognised the likeness the moment that we came face to face, when you boarded us; and I have three times spared your life on that account—twice while the fight was in progress, and again when my people would have heaved your still breathing body to the sharks!”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed, “is it possible that you can ever have known my mother?”
“Ay,” answered Ricardo, “extraordinary as it may appear to you, I once knew your mother well. However,” he broke off hurriedly, “this is not the moment in which to become reminiscent; your wound is troubling you, I can see. I will call Fonseca to dress it afresh; meanwhile, be under no apprehension as to your safety. I will protect you with my own life, if necessary, although I do not think it will quite come to that.”
And, so saying, he left the cabin, to return a few minutes later, accompanied by the surgeon and his assistant, François, the mulatto boy. With the utmost care on the part of Fonseca, and to the accompaniment of sundry maledictions in Spanish, muttered under his breath by Ricardo as I involuntarily winced now and then during the process, my wound was laid bare and carefully examined. It was by this time terribly inflamed and horribly painful, and I seemed to gather, from the grave and anxious look on Fonseca’s face, that he regarded it as somewhat serious. He said nothing, however, but gave it a very thorough fomentation, dressed it, and carefully bound it up again. This done he administered a sleeping draught, and left me in charge of François, to whom he gave certain whispered instructions which I could not catch. When he presently retired, Ricardo followed him out of the cabin, and I saw him no more that night, for the sleeping draught, though somewhat long in operating, had its effect at last, and I sank into a feverish, troubled sleep, in which I was vexed by all sorts of fantastic fancies, in some of which my mother and the man Ricardo seemed to be associated together most incongruously. Then there were moments when I seemed to awake to find Ricardo and Fonseca bending over me anxiously, and others in which I appeared to be sitting up in my cot and talking the veriest nonsense to François, who, on such occasions, seemed to be entreating me, with tears in his eyes, to lie down again and remain quiet. Then ensued further phantasmagoria of the most extravagant description, of which I subsequently remembered little or nothing save that I seemed to be consumed with fever, that liquid fire was rushing through my veins instead of blood, and that I was continually tormented by an unquenchable thirst.
This state of discomfort endured for ages—apparently; in reality, however, it lasted only a week, at the end of which period I emerged from my delirium to find myself comfortably, nay, luxuriously, disposed upon a large bed in a spacious room overlooking an extensive garden, gorgeous with strange and brilliant-hued flowers and fragrant with their mingled perfumes, which sloped very gently down to a sandy beach, beyond which was visible, through the wide-open casements of the apartment, a wide stretch of landlocked water, in the centre of which floated the hull of a vessel that I had no difficulty in identifying as the Barracouta. The room which I occupied was elegantly furnished. Its walls were decorated with several oil paintings that, to my uneducated eye at least, appeared to be exceedingly good, and dotted about the room here and there were little tables upon each of which stood a vase of magnificent flowers. This was the scene upon which my eyes opened as I awoke from the first natural sleep that had visited me since that disastrous day when I had been struck down upon the deck of the pirate brig, and I lay for some minutes motionless, drinking in the beauty and the delight of it all, and revelling lazily in the sensation of relief from pain and fever that I was now enjoying.
Then, as I unconsciously sighed with excess of pleasure, I became aware of a slight movement beside the bed, and, glancing round, I perceived a middle-aged negress bending over me and looking anxiously into my eyes.
“Bueno! The señor is himself again at last!” she exclaimed in accents of great satisfaction as she placed her cool hand upon my brow for a moment, and then proceeded to smooth my rebellious locks with a tenderness that was almost caressing. “Yes,” she continued, “the fever has quite gone, and now the señor has nought to do save to get well and strong again as soon as possible.” She spoke in Spanish, and her accent and manner were those of one who had been accustomed all her life to associate with cultured people.
“Who are you, pray?” I demanded in the same language, “and where am I?”
“I am Mammy,” she answered, “the old nurse of the señorita, and Señor Ricardo’s housekeeper. And you are now in Señor Ricardo’s own house—ay, and in his own room, too! What is the young English señor to Señor Ricardo, I wonder, that he should be cared for thus?”
I scarcely knew whether this last remark was in the nature of a soliloquy, or whether I was to take it as a question addressed to me, but I treated it as the latter, and replied:
“I really do not know, Mammy, but—stop a moment; let me think—yes—I seem to remember—or did I dream it?—that Captain Ricardo said he—had—once known my mother! But, no, that cannot be possible, I must have dreamed it—and yet—no—that part of it scarcely seems to be a dream!”
“No matter, no matter,” answered Mammy musingly; “we shall doubtless know the truth sooner or later. Now, señor, it is past the time when you ought to have taken your medicine, but you were sleeping so peacefully that I could not bring myself to wake you. Take it now; it is a sovereign remedy for all kinds of fever; I never yet knew it to fail; and then, if you are thirsty, you may have just one glass of sangaree!”
I took the potion and swallowed it obediently; it had an intensely but not altogether disagreeable bitter taste; and then I quaffed the generous tumbler of sangaree that the old lady handed me. Oh, that sangaree! I had never tasted it before, and though I have often since then drunk the beverage I have never again enjoyed a draught so much as I did that particular one; it was precisely my idea of nectar!
“Aha!” quoth the old woman as she watched the keen enjoyment with which I emptied the tumbler, “the señor likes that? Good! he shall have some more a little later. Now I must go and see to the making of some broth for the señor; it is his strength that we must now build up.”
And, so saying, the old nurse glided softly out of the room, leaving me to enjoy the glorious scene that was framed by the wide-open window at the foot of my bed.
I had lain thus for perhaps five minutes when the door of the room again opened, and there entered a young girl of some sixteen years of age—that was her actual age, I subsequently learned, but she looked quite two years older,—who came to the side of the bed and stood looking down upon me with large, lustrous eyes that beamed with pity and tenderness. Then, as she laid her cool, soft hand very gently upon my forehead, she said, in the softest, sweetest voice to which I have ever listened:
“Oh, Señor Grenvile, it is good to see you looking so very much better. You will recover now; but there was a time—ah, how long ago it seems, yet it was but yesterday!—when we all thought that you would never live to see the light of another day. It was Mammy, and her wonderful knowledge of medicine, that saved you. Had not the captain realised your critical state, and driven the men to incredible exertions to get the ship into harbour quickly, you could not have lived!”
“Señorita,” said I, “how can I sufficiently thank you for the kind interest you exhibit in an unfortunate prisoner—for that, I suppose, is what I am—”
“No, señor, oh no; you are quite mistaken!” interjected my companion. “At least,” she corrected herself, “you are mistaken in the character of your imprisonment. That you certainly are a prisoner, in a sense, is quite true; but I hope—that is, I—do—not think—you will find your imprisonment very intolerable.”
“All imprisonment, whatever its character, must be intolerable, it seems to me,” I grumbled. Then, checking myself, I exclaimed: “But do not let us talk about myself. Do you mind telling me who you are? Your face seems familiar to me, somehow, yet I am certain that I have never before seen you. Are you, by any chance, Captain Ricardo’s daughter?”
The girl’s face clouded somewhat as she answered: “No; oh no, I am not Captain Ricardo’s daughter! I am an orphan; I have never known what it is to have either father or mother, and I am a prisoner—like yourself, yet I do not find my state by any means intolerable. Captain Ricardo has been kindness itself to me, indeed he could not have been more kind to me had I really been his daughter.”
“Ah,” said I, “I am glad to hear it, for your sake! He seems a strange man, a very curious commingling of good and evil traits of character—kind and gentle to you—and, thus far, to me—yet relentlessly cruel and bloodthirsty in the prosecution of his accursed calling. And your name, señorita, will you not tell me that?”
“Oh, yes, certainly! Why should I not?” answered my companion. “I am called Lotta—Carlotta Josefa Candelaria Dolores de Guzman. And your name is Dick, is it not?”
“Why, certainly it is!” I exclaimed. “But how in the world did you know that?”
“Because,” she answered, “when you were brought ashore yesterday, Captain Ricardo sent for me, and said: ‘This young fellow is Dick Grenvile, the son of a once very dear friend of mine; and I want you, Lotta, and Mammy, to do your utmost to nurse him back to health and strength again.’”
“And you and Mammy have been doing so with marvellously satisfactory results,” said I. “And that, I suppose, accounts for the fact of your face seeming familiar to me; I probably saw you once or twice during my delirium?”
“Yes,” she admitted, “you certainly did see me—once or twice.”
“Well, Lotta—I suppose I may call you Lotta, may I not? Señorita sounds so very formal, does it not?” I suggested.
“Oh, yes, certainly!” assented my companion. “And I may call you Dick, may I not? Señor sounds so very formal, does it not?” Her quaint mimicry of my earnestness of manner was irresistibly droll.
“Of course you may,” I agreed eagerly. “Well, Lotta—now, let me remember—what was it I was about to say? Oh, yes, of course—how came you to be a prisoner in the power of this man Ricardo?”
“Very simply, yet in a manner that you would scarcely credit,” was the reply. “You must know that my mother died just after I was born, my father when I was just two years old. Up to then Mammy had looked after me, but when my father died his estates were taken in charge by some people whom my father had appointed to look after them—what do you call those people—?”
“Trustees, we call them in England,” I suggested.
“Yes,” assented Lotta, “they were my father’s trustees, and my guardians, empowered to look after my interests and manage the estates until I should arrive at the age of eighteen. When I was seven years of age the trustees decided to send me over to Old Spain to be educated, and I accordingly went, in charge of the wife of one of them, with Mammy to look after me. I was educated at the convent of Santa Clara, in Seville, where I remained until my fourteenth birthday, when I was taken out of the convent and placed on board a ship bound to Havana, my guardians having decided that I had received as much education as was necessary, and that the time had arrived when I ought to return to Cuba and take my place as mistress of my household and owner of the vast estate of which I was the heiress. Then a terrible misfortune befell us: the ship on board which I was a passenger caught fire, and was utterly destroyed, and everybody was obliged to take refuge in the boats. Then, to add still further to our misery, a gale sprang up, and the boats became separated. We suffered dreadfully during that gale, and were several times in the greatest danger of being drowned. Then, when the gale was over, the sailors in our boat knew not in which direction to steer, and so we went drifting aimlessly hither and thither, not knowing where we were going, but hoping, day after day, that a ship would come in sight and pick us up. And very soon our food and water became exhausted, and our sufferings intensified to such an extent that some of the men went mad and threw themselves into the sea. As for me, I became so weak at last that I lost consciousness, and did not again revive until I found myself on board the Barracouta, with Mammy looking after me. We arrived here before I was well enough to walk, and here I have remained ever since, that is to say, nearly two years.”
“Well,” I exclaimed, “that is a most extraordinary story, extraordinary not only from the fact of your having been the heroine of such a terrible adventure, but even more so from the circumstance that you were rescued and have been taken care of ever since by Ricardo. One would have thought that it would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to have callously left you all to perish. How many of your boat’s crew were alive when he picked you up?”
“Only two sailors, and Mammy, and myself,” answered Lotta; “and I afterwards heard that the sailors had joined Ricardo.”
“And have you never had any desire to escape and seek the protection of your guardians?” demanded I.
“Only at very rare intervals, and even then the feeling was not very strong,” was the extraordinary answer. “You see,” Lotta explained, “I am perfectly happy where I am. This is a most lovely spot in which to live, the most lovely that I have ever seen; and Ricardo is kindness itself to me during the rare periods when he is ‘at home’, as he calls it. I have never expressed a wish that he has not gratified, I have every possible comfort, and, what with my guitar, my garden, my morning and evening swim, and making clothes for myself, I find so much occupation that I do not know what it is to have a wearisome moment. And, now that you have come to be a companion to me, I cannot think of anything else to wish for.”
The charming naïvété of this remark fairly took my breath away; but I was careful that the girl should not be allowed to guess, from my manner, that she had said anything in the least remarkable. Before I could reply, the sound of approaching footsteps became audible, and Lotta remarked:
“Now, here comes Fonseca, and I suppose I shall have to go. But I will come back again when he leaves you.”
As she rose to her feet the door opened, and the Spanish surgeon entered.
“Good morning, señorita!” he exclaimed. “How is our patient? Vastly better, Mammy tells me. I see she is busy preparing some broth for Señor Grenvile, but he must not have it until I have thoroughly satisfied myself that it would be good for him. Well, señor,” as he seated himself on the side of the bed and laid his fingers upon my pulse, “you are looking rather more like a living being than you were twenty-four hours ago. Mammy’s medicines are simply marvellous, I will say that for them, although the old witch will not tell me of what they are composed. Um! yes; eyes bright—almost too bright—pulse strong but decidedly too quick. You have been talking too much. That will not do. The señorita”—she had slipped out of the room by this time—“must either stay away, or not talk to you. Now, let me look at your wound.” And he proceeded very carefully to remove the dressings.
This, it appeared, was progressing very satisfactorily, so he re-dressed it—my broken pate had healed itself, and needed no further looking after,—administered a sleeping draught, and then retired, after informing me that I could have Mammy’s broth later, but that, in the meantime, sleep was of more value and importance to me than food. He had not been gone ten minutes before I was fast asleep.
Several days elapsed, and I never saw Ricardo, although I was told by Lotta and Mammy that he had frequently looked in upon me while I slept. Thanks to good nursing, I was making very satisfactory progress, although still far too weak and ill to be able to rise from my bed. Meanwhile I was able to see, by simply looking out of my bedroom window, that the Barracouta was being rapidly refitted—so rapidly, indeed, that I conjectured Ricardo must have made a point of always keeping an entire spare set of masts, spars, rigging, and sails on hand, in readiness for any such emergency as that which had arisen in connection with his fight with the Francesca.
At length, when I had been ashore nearly a fortnight, I noticed that the brig was once more all ataunto and apparently ready for sea. That same night Ricardo entered my room, and, having made exhaustive enquiries as to the state of my health, took a seat by my bedside, with the air of a man who purposed to indulge in a long chat.
“This last fortnight has done wonders for you,” he said. “Thanks to the unremitting care of Lotta and Mammy, I think you will now be able to pull round without any further attention from Fonseca. And that reminds me to tell you that we go to sea at dawn to-morrow, and of course Fonseca goes with us. But he assures me that you now need nothing but good nursing and good feeding to restore you completely, and those Lotta and Mammy will be able to give you. You will not mind my leaving you in their charge, I hope?”
“Oh, no,” I said, “not at all! Indeed, I have to thank you for quite an extraordinary amount of kindness. You could scarcely have done more for me had you been my father.”
“You think so?” he said. “Good! I am glad to hear you say that, because—ah, well, it is useless to think of that now! By the way, is your mother still living?”
“She was when I last heard from home,” said I, “and I hope she will live for many long years to come.”
“I say amen to that,” answered this extraordinary man. “When next you see her, say that Dick Courtenay saved your life—for her sweet sake. And tell her also that, despite everything that was said against me, I was innocent. She will understand what I mean and will believe me, perhaps, after all these years. Ah,” he continued, springing to his feet and striding up and down the room, “if she had but believed me at the time, I should never have become what I now am! Had she had faith in me, I could have borne everything else—shame, disgrace, dishonour, ruin—I could have borne them all. But when to the loss of those was added the loss of her esteem, her respect, her love, it was too much; I had nothing left to live for—save revenge; and by heaven I have had my fill of that!”
“Do you actually mean to say that you were once my mother’s lover?” I gasped.
“Ay,” he answered bitterly, “her accepted lover. And I should have been her husband but for the accursed villainy of one who—but why speak of it? The mischief is done, and is irremediable.”
“Surely you do not pretend to suggest that my father—?” I ejaculated.
“No, certainly not!” he replied quickly. “Do not misunderstand me. It was not your father who was my enemy, oh no! He was my rival for a time, it is true, but he was also my friend, and the very soul of honour. Oh no! the loss of your mother’s love was merely one of many results of a piece of as consummate villainy as ever dragged the honour of a British naval officer in the mire. But, pshaw! let us speak of other things. I suppose you have wondered what are my ultimate intentions toward you, have you not? Well, I will tell you. You once reproached me with having ruined your professional career. My dear boy, have no fear of anything of the kind. It was your misfortune, not your fault, that we were too strong for you, and if Sir Timothy Tompion—oh yes,” in answer to my look of surprise, “I know Sir Timothy quite well, and he knows me, or thinks he does!—if Sir Timothy had only known that he was sending you out to fight the Barracouta, he would have given you, if not a bigger ship, at least twice as heavy an armament, and twice as strong a crew. So, when he comes to hear your story, he will not blame you for failing to take me; have no fear of that. Therefore, because I feel convinced that your ill-success in your fight with me will in nowise prejudice your professional prospects, it is my intention, all being well, to take you to sea with me next trip, and either put you ashore somewhere whence you can easily make your way to Port Royal, or else to put you aboard the first ship bound for Kingston that we may chance to fall in with.
“But to provide against any possibility of your fortunes going awry, I have decided to make you my heir; therefore—stop a moment, please; I think I can guess what you would say—that you positively refuse to have anything whatever to do with wealth acquired by robbery and murder. Quite right, my dear boy, it is precisely what I should expect—ay, and wish—you to say. But when I was an Englishman I sometimes used to hear people say that ‘circumstances alter cases’; and this is one of them. The wealth that I propose to bequeath to you has not been acquired by me through any objectionable practices, it came to me through the merest accident, and nobody is aware of its existence save Lotta and myself. If it is indeed a pirate hoard, as is not at all unlikely, there is nothing to prove that such is the case; nor, assuming for the moment that it is so, is there anything to tell us either the name of the pirate who got it together, or the names of those from whom he took it. And, in any case, if it is the spoils of a pirate gang, they must have operated about a hundred years ago; and since they are now all undoubtedly dead and gone, as also are those from whom it was taken, you have as much right to it as anybody, and may as well have it. Lotta will show you where it lies concealed; and, since I shall never make use of it, you are at liberty to help yourself to the whole of it as soon as you please.
“There is one thing more that I wish to say to you. It is about Lotta. By the way, what do you think of Lotta?” he interrupted himself to enquire.
“I think she is the sweetest, most charming, and most lovely girl that has ever lived!” I exclaimed enthusiastically, for I had fully availed myself of my opportunities for making her acquaintance, and had fallen over head and ears in love with her, although I have hitherto refrained from saying so, because this is not a love story, but one of adventure.
“Ah!” exclaimed Ricardo grimly; “yes, I see the inevitable has happened! Well, well, I have nothing to say against it, nor will your mother, unless she has greatly altered since I knew her. However, to revert to Lotta, I am afraid that, without in the least intending it, I have done that poor girl a very serious wrong. We fell in with the boat in which she, Mammy, and two Spanish sailors were starving, just as a light air of wind had dropped to a dead calm; as a matter of fact we drifted right up alongside the boat, so that it became impossible to avoid taking those who were living out of her. Even pirates have their gentle moments occasionally, and the sight of those four, perishing of hunger and of thirst, in a craft that had literally drifted alongside us, was more than we could endure; therefore we hauled them up out of the boat, brought them round, cared for them—and they have been inmates of my house ever since. Lotta seemed quite content to remain; she never murmured, never expressed the slightest desire for a life different from that which she was living ashore here. And where Lotta was content, Mammy was supremely happy; therefore—well, I got fond of the child, and resolutely refused to allow my thoughts to turn in the direction of sending her away from me. But your coming has altered everything, I can see that. When you go, she will have to go too; she would never be happy here again without you, that is certain. Moreover, my eyes have been opened of late to the great wrong that I have been doing her. She is a rich heiress, and ought now to be in possession of her property. Therefore, when I return—by which time you will doubtless be quite well again—I will give you the charge of Lotta and Mammy, and ask you to see that the former is safely placed in the care of her guardians. While I am away this time I will arrange a plan by which these matters can be brought about, and will explain everything to you upon my return. And now I think I have said everything that I had to say, and will therefore bid you good-night, and good-bye, since we shall sail at daybreak, and all hands, myself included, will sleep aboard to-night. I hope that when I return, which will probably be in about a month from now, I shall find you quite well and strong again.”
And as Ricardo pronounced the last words he rose, with the evident intention of going.
“One moment, please,” I said hastily; “pray do not go just yet. You have been doing all the talking thus far, now I wish to say a word or two.”
“By all means,” he answered with a laugh, as he resumed his seat. “Say on. I promise you my very best attention.”
But, now that it came to the point, I suddenly found myself hesitating; I had spoken upon the spur of the moment, with a very definite purpose in my mind, but quite unexpectedly I found myself entirely at a loss for words. At length, seeing Ricardo’s look of surprise at my hesitation, I plunged desperately in medias res.
“Look here,” I stammered, “I—that is to say—oh, hang it, I find it very difficult to know how to begin! I want very particularly to say something to you, and I want to say it, if I can, without hurting your feelings—”
Ricardo laughed grimly. “Say on, without fear,” he remarked; “don’t stop to pick and choose your words. In my time I have been compelled to listen to words that have seared my very soul, words that drove me desperate, and made me what I am. You can scarcely have anything to say that will hurt me more keenly than I have been hurt already; moreover, I have now grown callous, so say on without fear.”
The intense and concentrated bitterness with which he uttered those last few words gave me courage; moreover, I felt certain that my companion would recognise the kindly feeling which actuated me, so without more ado I proceeded:
“What I wish to say is this. You have somehow contrived to convey to my mind the impression that you are a very deeply injured man, that you have been driven to the adoption of your present mode of life by some great and terrible wrong; moreover, you have been kind to Lotta, and especially kind to me; and, lastly, your references to your former friendship with my mother have been such that it has been impossible for me to avoid feeling very deeply interested in you. Now, why should you not abandon your present mode of life? You say that you possess treasure which has come into your possession by perfectly honest means, and to which, to use your own words, you have as much right as anybody. Why not take that treasure then, and go away to some part of the world where you are not known, and there begin life afresh?”
“Ah!” said Ricardo, “I have asked myself that question more than once without obtaining a satisfactory answer to it. I should like to do so, were it possible, for I am very heartily sick of the life that I am now leading. There was a time when, soured and embittered by as cruel a wrong as man could inflict upon his fellow man, I believed that I could find consolation, if not actual happiness, in the wreaking of my vengeance upon every Englishman whom I could get into my power, or whose wealth I could take from him by force; but that time has long passed, the revenge which I believed would be so sweet has turned to dust and ashes in my mouth, and now I am so weary of life that the bullet or steel that should rid me of it would be more welcome than any other earthly thing. When it is too late, I have begun to realise the full depth of my villainy, and to see what a contemptibly cowardly creature I have been in permitting myself to seek such an ignoble method of revenge as piracy. But, as I said, it is now too late, yes, too late—”
“Surely not,” I broke in. “Have you forgotten the homely old adage that ‘It’s never too late to mend’? What you have done can never be undone, it is true, but it can be repented of, and reparation can be made, if not directly to the persons injured, yet by doing good to others where you have the opportunity. Will you not think the matter over again, and this time with the determination to arrive at a right decision?”
“I will think it over, certainly,” he said. “As to arriving at ‘a right decision’, that is as may be. If I can see my way to such a decision it may be that I shall take it. I will consider the matter while I am at sea, and I promise you that no wrong shall be done during the progress of this cruise if I can possibly help it, and I think I can. For I always make a point of confining the navigation of the ship strictly to myself; nobody aboard ever knows where we are until I choose to tell them, and it will therefore be easy for me to take the brig to some spot where there is little or no chance of our falling in with other craft. Then, perhaps, if we can cruise for a month or six weeks without taking a prize, the men may be content to accept their share of the booty, and disband, especially as I should tell them that they may divide my own share between them. And now, good-bye, with many thanks for your sympathy!”