Our converse was broken up by the captain and mate walking aft together. The vessel was by this time put into proper trim, and standing on her course, with sails very well set, and swelling gaily in the breeze. The mate looked to windward. ‘I think the weather will hold steady,’ he said. Immediately, the captain shouted out to the boatswain to call all hands, and, presently, in answer to that shrill, sharp whistle, which penetrates down to the very keel of a ship, the crew tumbled upon deck, most of them being by this time sober enough, and trooped aft to the break of the poop, upon which Le Chiffon Rouge and Jerry stood. The ship was then hove to, with her broad maintop-sail laid to the mast, and Le Chiffon Rouge taking off his three-cornered hat, as it was the custom of the captain of a privateer to do when he addressed the whole crew, began to speak in a smooth, plausible fashion, to this effect—
‘Last night, gentlemen, as you well know, the “Saucy Susan” captured a Spanish sloop, out of which we took what we wanted, and then dismissed her. You cannot complain, any of you, that you had not as much of the good wine which we found aboard the sloop, as you could swill, with plenty of time and space to drink it in. But, gentlemen, here hath an ugly accident turned out in your revelry, and which it behoves me to inquire into. One of our honourable company hath drawn his knife, and wounded a comrade, in his cups, and that, by all the rules of privateersmen, must be punished. It is not that I much care about a kick on the shins, or a box on the ears, given or taken when the wine cup is full, and the dice-box rattling—but cold steel, comrades, we must keep for the Spaniards, and not get into the habit of polishing our knives against each other’s ribs.’
The crew applauded this address, which seemed reasonable enough; but Rumbold whispered to me, that he would lay his life upon it that either Le Chiffon Rouge, or Jerry, had some cause of spite against the Portuguese; otherwise, said he, the whole ship’s company might hack the flesh off each other’s bones without interference.
‘Now then,’ continued the scowling captain, ‘some of you fetch Vasco, of Lisbon, hither, and Doctor, do you bring up Shambling Ned.’ So, in a few minutes, the Portuguese, with his hands tied behind him, was hurried along the deck, and the wounded man came out of the cabin, leaning upon the surgeon, and looking very pale, his blood still clotted in jelly-looking masses among his long hair. Vasco, in spite of his great name, seemed to me to be as hang-dog looking a rascal as ever I saw, with a low flat forehead, and only one eye. He was a lithe, slightly made young fellow, with a thin, ragged beard and drooping moustache. When he was confronted with the captain and Jerry, the latter cast a look upon him so full of hate and spite, that I soon perceived that Rumbold was in the right in his conjecture. The Portuguese never appeared to notice the wounded man at all.
‘Now, then,’ the captain began, ‘you, Shambling Ned, ‘tell us how you came by that trench upon your forehead.’
But Shambling Ned, who was, as I have said, a stout seaman, but with a hitch in his gait, from whence he obtained his nickname, gave but a very confused account of the transaction. What between the quantity of wine which he had drunk, and the quantity of blood which he had lost, his wits appeared to be still gone a wool-gathering, and all that he could say was, that he had been playing dice for small stakes with the Portuguese, when they had a quarrel about a cast, and that blows had passed; but who had struck first he really did not know; that in the middle of the scuffle, however, when they were staggering about among their comrades and tripping over the masses of goods and stores which lay upon the deck, he suddenly saw a knife in the hand of his adversary, and, almost at the same instant, he had received the violent cut upon his head, from which the hot blood came pouring down; that after that he knew nothing, until he was brought to himself by the smart of the surgeon’s instrument sewing up the wound.
The evidence of several of the seamen was then taken, but they all gave different accounts; some maintaining that Vasco had begun the fray, and others that Shambling Ned had first seized up a knife himself, so that I saw very plainly that the whole affair was the effect of a drunken squabble, in which one was probably as much to blame as another. At last, however, the young man who had recognised Rumbold, stood forth, and I saw very plainly the glance of intelligence which passed between him and Jerry.
‘Now for Tommy Nixon’s testimony,’said the captain; ‘and I warrant that he will speak more to the purpose than these noddies there, who seem to make no more use of their eyes than if they were boiled gooseberries!’
So Nixon began to speak in a low, whining sort of tone, professing great regret for the disturbance, and particularly that Vasco, whom he said he loved as though he had been his own brother, should have so shamefully outraged all the laws observed by gentlemen adventurers. Still the truth was the truth; and if he must tell what he knew, it was this, that Vasco having tried to cheat Shambling Ned out of the piece of eight which they were playing for, and having been reproached by the latter for his meanness, had straightway hit Ned in the face; and that when Ned had risen to his feet to defend himself, the Portuguese had immediately drawn his knife and struck the blow, swearing at the same time that he would like to do as much for every Englishman on board the ship.
At this, the Portuguese, who had hitherto stood, with downcast looks, listening to all the evidence, burst out in violent wrath, sputtering vehemently forth his broken English, and almost screaming in his excitement—