The captain accordingly took Parsons aside and informed him that they all had decided not to play with him in future. The scoundrel shrugged his shoulders, but, of course, had to accept the decision, for the captain was the autocrat of the ship. But worse was to follow, for before the voyage was at an end the officers added to their first decision another one which prevented anyone addressing Parsons except when duty compelled.
The studied contempt of his brother-officers did not affect him. He had long since lost all sense of decency, and his only anxiety was that there might be unnecessary delay before he reached land again.
Once more he found himself in London, and determined never to enter the navy again. The standard of honour at sea was too high for him, and the blunt sailors had a way of expressing their opinions which was decidedly uncomfortable.
He plunged again into the life of a gambler, but with all his experience could not win except on those rare occasions when he was able to persuade the company to play with the dice or cards he produced. Whenever this occurred he swept the board, but he was by now too well known, and it happened that it was only in the semi-public gambling saloon where trickery was impossible that he was allowed to play, because his fellow-gamblers knew that the dice could not be loaded or the cards marked.
One night he lost five thousand pounds to an army officer, and as he had only fifteen hundred pounds on him paid that amount on account. The officer, who was somewhat the worse for drink, shortly afterwards left the house, and Parsons followed him, robbed him of the money, returned, and lost it again at cards. It was a favourite trick of his to rob those he paid, and the astonishing thing about it all is that he was never detected.
Gamblers were fond of drinking and few of them were sober by midnight. Parsons, however, kept his wits about him, for he owed so much that he could not afford to handicap himself as the others did. And yet when he won a considerable sum he never had the sense to stop. On three occasions his winnings exceeded two thousand pounds, and within twenty-four hours he was penniless again.
Meanwhile he could live fairly comfortable on credit as it was known that the Duchess of Northumberland had named him for a large sum in her will, and it was expected that her Grace's decease would free him from all his liabilities.
Now, Parsons had been disinherited once—by his uncle, Captain Dutton, of Epsom—and that ought to have been a warning to him, but he never learned even from his misfortunes, and he was destined to receive nothing from his aunt.
It all came about owing to the sudden necessity for him to pay a visit abroad. London was swarming with his creditors, and to avoid them he went to Jamaica. But money was scarce there, too, and he found the local traders had a not unnatural preference for cash when it came to bargaining, and Parsons accordingly forged a letter, purporting to be signed by his aunt, guaranteeing to be responsible for any sum up to seventy pounds which her nephew might borrow.
When he had raised the sum mentioned, Parsons decamped, and some time afterwards the duchess was rendered furious by a demand from the Jamaican merchant for repayment. She disowned the forgery at once, and cut Parsons' name out of her will. She had intended to bequeath him twenty-five thousand pounds, and now she transferred the legacy to his sister, well aware that her family would take every precaution to prevent the "black sheep" touching any of it.