“Yes.”
“Ill luck had pursued that man,” Black Pawl went on evenly now. “They said his ship was a death-ship. Men died easily upon it; and it was hard for that vessel to find whales. Also it was hard for him to persuade men to ship with him. His officers were unlucky; and to be unlucky in the whale-fisheries is to die. He was driven to fight the whales himself. And it was thus, in the end, that he came into my hands.
My son’s boat picked him up one day. He had lowered for a whale, and got fast; and the fish ran with him till he was lost from his ship; and then he was forced to cut. Thereafter thirst fell upon that boat. Because he was strong, and because that was the breed of the man, he kept more than his fair measure of the water in the lantern-keg. So when Red Pawl found him drifting under the sun, only this man was left alive in the boat. There was another, dead, with him—his boat-steerer. He had thrown the others overside.
“The man was insane with thirst when Red found him. But he wouldn’t have known the boy, in any case; and Red didn’t know him. He brought him back to the schooner; and we took him into my cabin to nurse him back to life, and I knew him—there.
“When he was sane, he knew me; but he said nothing, hoping I did not know. And I said nothing until he was himself again, strong and well. In due time, one day, he wished to leave the cabin and go on deck. So I knew it was time for that which I meant to do.
“We tied this man, my son and I. We tied him in the bunk, and gagged him, I had told Red who he was, and Red wanted to slit his throat; but I would not do that. Red lacks imagination. I told him so.
“We tied him in his bunk, and gagged him. I told him then that I knew him; and I told him what I meant to do. It was in my mind to let him lie there without food or water till he died before my eyes. I believed then, and I still believe, that to do this would have been to show too much mercy.
“But when I told him what I meant to do, he made signs that he wished to speak; and I took away the gag from his mouth. He was a man of a certain rat-like courage, Father. He taunted me to my teeth; and he told me, among other things, that when he was tired of the woman I had loved, he had given her into the hands of an evil crew I knew of, and the child with her, and he said they had died unspeakably.
“That he spoke truth was plain in the man’s eye. I knew why he told me. It was to move me to give him the mercy of quick death; but I would not. Then he called me coward, and said that I would not face him as a man. So I laughed and told him he should have his wish to face me. He said he was weak. That was true. And I was hungry to feel his strong flesh break in my hands. I considered what we might do.
“What we did was this, Father: I turned the schooner toward an island of which I knew—a place where no humans lived. There we stayed a length of time, till the man was well; and there, when the time was ripe, we fought.