"Of my knife. Give it me back. I can't hurt you with it. You are more than a match for me with your pistols. How do you think I can live without a knife?"
Joshua makes no reply to this appeal to his humanity, and moves off a few steps, warily.
"I suppose you think yourself a manly sort of fellow," continues the Lascar, moving step for step with Joshua, but keeping at a safe distance nevertheless, "robbing people of their knives, threatening to murder them, and running away with an innocent girl, and ruining her!"
"You villain!" exclaims Joshua, quivering at this reference to Minnie, "do not make me forget myself!"
"So far as to shoot a man in cold blood!" sneers the Lascar. "But don't forget that the first time you struck me it was for running after a woman. What better are you than me? I ran after a woman, not an innocent girl. Perhaps you'll say you didn't trick her from her father's house, and make love to another girl, her friend, all the while, and that girl the sister of the man you pretended such fondness for! Going to be married to her too, I heard. But I can tell you something you don't know. You were precious sly with your sweetheart, Ellen Taylor, in Gravesend; she wouldn't suspect you, I dare say you thought, if you had her down at Gravesend until the ship sailed--she wouldn't have an idea then that your other sweetheart, Minnie Kindred, with her face stained brown, was waiting for you on board the 'Merry Andrew.' Ah! you played a cunning game, you pink of perfection, you sailor-hero; but I outwitted you, I think, in a way you're not aware of."
"How?" asks Joshua, constrained to listen.
"How? I watched you, and was paid for it. You little thought that, did you? I'll tell you something more. The man who paid me for watching had a fancy for your sweetheart Ellen: you've no need to ask me who he is, for you'll not find out through me. I did my duty to him, and he paid me for it. Why, directly I set eyes on that brown-faced gypsy-maid aboard the 'Merry Andrew,' I says, 'Minnie Kindred, by God!' and I set a trap for her, and she fell into it. Then what did I do? I sent a letter to my master by the pilot, and told him to go to Minnie Kindred's father, and to Dan, and to your mother and father, and to your other sweetheart, Ellen, and let them know that you had run away with the girl, that you parted from Ellen Taylor one minute, and was courting Minnie Kindred aboard ship the next. Was that a good game to play? Was I as cunning as you? Was that paying you for what you first did to me? Do you remember what I said, when you called me a dog of a Lascar? I told you that the Lascar dog never forgets--never, never! Why, now I look into your face, I could hug myself to think that we're wrecked, and that we shall die and rot here, every one of us, and that your sweetheart (who's my master's sweetheart now, I'll be sworn) and your friends know you for what you are--a mean false hound! I put a cross against you once, and I swore to have your heart's blood. Have I had as good? Think of it, and tell me if I have had my revenge."
But he does not wait to be told. There is so dangerous a look in Joshua's face, that he darts away and disappears in the bush. It is well for him that he has escaped, for Joshua is maddened by what he has heard. Truly the Lascar has struck at him with a cunning hand. The agony of his soul is shown in the convulsive twitching of his features, in his white lips, and in the veins of his strong hand, which swell almost to bursting as he grasps a stout branch for support. So he remains fighting with his agony with a bleeding heart, for full half an hour. This knowledge that he has gained is more bitter than all the rest. He knows the worst now. The evidence against him is awful in its completeness. "Even the Old Sailor will believe me guilty," he thinks, and groans aloud at the thought. But there is one duty before him to do. He must tell Minnie. This last resolve comes upon him when the force of his first passion is somewhat spent. Between him and Minnie no word has ever passed of those at home; their very names have been avoided. But Joshua now makes up his mind that silence on this subject must be broken. It must; both for Minnie's sake and his own.
It is past sundown. The day has been very hot, and the shadows of night bring cooler breezes, grateful to the senses of the castaways. Joshua has drawn Minnie a little apart from the others; she, yielding to his slightest wish, accompanies him to a part of the forest where they can talk unobserved. His first impulse is to ask her why she came on board the "Merry Andrew" unknown to him, and why she had disguised herself from him; but he spares her this pain, and takes from his breast Ellen's portrait and her lock of hair, and Dan's Bible. He hands Minnie the Bible.
"Do you know what this is?" he asks. "Yes," she answers; "it is the Bible that Dan gave you."