"What?"
"If we can do it, and if Captain Jenks is free, put in a word for me. Let him know that whatever else I did, I tried to change back to what I was. Let him know I went back. Those would be the words, Mr. Cory. Say to him, if so be I can't say it myself, say that Matthew Ledyard went back."
"I will."
"And one other thing. If we can do it, then when we raise the Cape or—my God, better if it might be Rhode Island, but I suppose there's no hope of that—aid me, if you can, to get away in the boat. It's a thing, Mr. Cory—I've got a fear I wouldn't hang decent. Sooner drown. Would it sit fair with your conscience to help me run for it? Would you do that much, if I can help you in this thing?"
Ben said: "It sticks in my conscience that hanging never mended anything, and I will do that if I can. It'll mean deceiving Captain Jenks, helping you steal the boat, but I will do it. Matthew Ledyard, I'm eighteen, with less than a year at sea against the many that you've served. Can you take orders from me?"
Wonderingly, Ledyard said: "Yes, sir, I can."
"Bide the time then. It will be soon. I must speak with Mills and do one or two other things."
Ben spoke quickly—already he heard the commotion of Dummy lurching up from the forecastle with his monkey, and he was dizzy with the first full understanding of what had taken place. Well, damn it, I was wishing to make things happen!... As he moved away from Ledyard the man's whisper followed him: "Don't forget, those are the words, Mr. Cory—Matthew Ledyard went back...."
The monkey had begun to ail when the fruit gave out, after the Diana left the Bahamas, although she had endured other periods of poor eating without harm. This morning she looked half dead in the great hairy cradle of Dummy's arms. Dummy squatted with her at the foot of the mainmast, crooning hopelessly. Sometimes in the last few days she had swallowed a bit of sea biscuit if Dummy chewed the miserable stuff first to soften it. This morning she would not, but only shivered in spite of the sullen heat and twisted her wise black head away from the repulsive mass. Ben on his way aft paused to consider them, aware that of the two sorrowful ape-faces, Dummy's held the greater pain. The little black beast was merely dying.
She had been lively and delighted with her new home after her capture from the Schouven, learning every corner of the ketch—including the galley, where she could engage in shrieking encounters with French Jack. Since she returned continually, and never got anything there except missiles and rhetoric unsuited to the tender sex, Ben deduced that because of her streak of hoyden she must relish war for its own sake. Jack never once scored a hit. Best of all she loved soaring in dizzy flights all over the rigging, and hanging by her tail from the crosstrees to contemplate the sky and the ocean and the ways of man. She would come quickly down out of that for Dummy if he smacked his lips, but not for anyone else—except, occasionally and with the air of granting a favor, for Ben.