Immediately after, a man rose up from an empty water-hole that lay near in my path.
He was a small man, and very wild looking, having a shock of towselled red hair and beard that nigh covered his face, and clothed in rags and patches. He stood clutching the staff and tattered banner which we had observed from the ship, and peered in my face with his glittering eyes.
“Ha! little pilgrim,” cried he again. “What is your sin, shipmate? What ha’ been your offence against the Righteous?”
I perceived he was stark mad. “I have slain a man in a duel,” said I, humouring him.
“Ha! ’twas a sore offence,” cried he, and began to wave his banner above my head, “’Twas a black sin, Jesus ha’ mercy! ’Twas a most grievous transgression. Now, look’e hereon, shipmate! Behold, it shall be as an ensign on an hill!”
Hereupon he turned from me, and made with great bounds towards a high boulder which stood at a few yards’ distance. He set the staff in a cleft of the rock, crying: “Behold the ensign of the Lord! Look’e on the banner, shipmate, and say after me, ‘Father I have sinned afore Heaven and afore Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.’”
A gust of wind took the banner, stretching it out, and I beheld upon it the Royal device of Spain. I began to repeat the words; but he took me up short.
“Gramercy!” cried he, “Look on the ensign, can’t you? Look on the ensign! Now, over agen!”
I perceived by the look in his rolling eyes that he was on the verge of a frenzy-fit, and I hasted to humour him to the letter.
When I had said and acted to his satisfaction, he took the banner in his hand again, and began to wave it over my head, and absolved me (as he called it) in a hotch-potch jargon of Scriptural and nautical phrase. Madness makes ever a rueful picture, but the shape this man’s took was extremely scandalising to me; and it may easily be believed, that now I repented more than ever of having come on shore, and would have given a great deal to have been safe back on the ship again. But there was worse to come.