"Now, Master Ormerod, what honest sailorman a-tremblin' for his life is goin' to remember faces out o' a crew o' pirates he sees on a shot-up deck? All he thinks of, says you, is a lot of villains as has likely slaughtered his mess-mates and looted his ship, and quite right. Why, I've been stood treat in Kingston by a skipper I'd stripped two months past—but that was afore I lost my leg, which bein' in other seas ain't as yet a mark of identification on me in these parts."
"And did you take this ship designedly to carry you into New York?"
"You might say truthfully she was the best fitted for it of several," he acknowledged. "Blow my other stick off if she was good for anything else."
"Not forty pounds in her," mumbled Pew, twiddling the wheel-spokes.
"Her crew——"
Silver raised his eyebrows and gave me a slow wink.
"Poor unfortunates! 'Twas one time we couldn't take chances."
Pew's chuckle trickled icily from under the eye-shade which cast a green blur over his whole lower face.
"I suppose there is a hell for such as you," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
"Some says there is and some says there isn't," answered Silver reasonably. "No use to worry, says I."