"Well, Bennie," he cried, "so we've got a prisoner, have we?"
"No, sir," whimpered the man from Boston, "not a prisoner. I come over, I did."
"You what?"
"I come over—to your side, sir."
"How about it, Ben?"
"Why, so he says. We were having a pretty hard wrestling match, but he says it was to cover up his escape from the other party."
"How was I to get away, sir, if I didn't have a subterfoog," the prisoner interposed eagerly. "I had to wrastle. If I hadn't have, they'd 'a' shot me down as sure as duff on Sunday."
For my own part I was not yet convinced of his good faith. He had gripped my throat quite too vindictively. To this very day, when I close my eyes I can feel his hard fingers clenched about my windpipe and his knees forcing my arms down on the bloody deck. He had let me go, too, only when we both knew that Captain Falk and his men had put off from the ship. It seemed very much as if he were trying to make the best of a bad bargain. But if, on the other hand, he was entirely sincere in his protestations, it might well be true that he did not dare come over openly to our side. The problem had so many faces that it fairly made me dizzy, so I abandoned it and tore open my clothes to examine the flesh wound on my shoulder.
"Ay," I thought, when I saw where the musket-ball had cut me at close range, "that was a friendly shot, was it not?"
Roger himself was not yet willing to let the matter fall so readily. His sharp questions stirred the man from Boston to one uneasy denial after another.