Finding me resolute to know about her, he told me this much:—
“She came aboard while the Fair Maid was in the river, to nurse your cousin as he lay ill of his wounds. But I believe he had been tempting her before that to come out to the Indies with him, and she held back for him to go to church with her first, and this he didn’t care enough for her to do. Anyhow, it ended in his getting round her to trust herself with him, and he swore he would carry her straight to Calcutta and hand her over to her people there. When we got out here, and she found he had no such purpose, but meant to keep her in the fortress as long as it suited his pleasure, there was a terrible business betwixt them. But you know what the lieutenant is, and that it ain’t a few tears from a woman that’ll turn him from anything he has a mind to do. So he just set her ashore by force, and there she is, as much a prisoner as Mr. Sims himself.”
I was overcome with the horror of this news, though I suppose it was what I should have expected from my cousin’s character.
“Good heavens!” I cried out in my distraction. “Do you mean that she is in the hands of the pirates at Gheriah?”
“That’s about what it comes to. And the sooner you give up all thoughts of her the better for you, says I.”
Before I could frame any answer—and, indeed, I know not what answer I could have made—there was a great noise and trampling upon deck, and a man came down to tell us that the vessel was about to weigh anchor, and that the boatswain was wanted to attend to the service of the ship. Whereupon he left me, in the company of bitterer thoughts than a man can have more than once in his life.
I pass over the dreary time spent by me in that dismal confinement during our voyage. Old Muzzy visited me pretty often, and once Rupert himself came down and made offers towards a reconcilement.
“Say that you will join us honestly, and I will take off the irons, and rate you as one of the crew. And when occasion serves, I will cause you to be made lieutenant under me,” he promised, “for after all you are my own kinsman, and blood is thicker than water.”
Whether he was sincere in this, or was compelled to it by my friend the boatswain, I do not know. But I had only one reply to give him.