"Never a word, but was as agreeable as could be, though he didn't make much talk with me; but I was afraid he would poison me; didn't drink any liquor all the passage for fear he might give me a dose, and watched him as a cat would a mouse."
"Pity you couldn't always have sailed with him. It might have made a sober man of you."
"One night, after we got in the edge of the gulf, he got crooking his elbow again, and began to use bad language to me because I shortened sail in my watch without consulting him. I just held up my fore-finger, and said, 'Look here, my fine fellow: we are in the edge of the gulf. I will hang you when we get in.' I then told him that I knew all about his selling that nigger to Lemaire, that he had abused me in Martinique, and on the passage thus far home, and I would have my revenge; that the moment we made land, I would tell the crew, put him in irons, and appear against him in court."
"What did he say to that?"
"He was terribly frightened; said he was sorry he did it, but he couldn't bear to be put down before the crew by a nigger; and that he never should have thought of that way of getting revenge, if the planter hadn't put it into his head; and wound up by telling me that he would give me five hundred dollars to say nothing about it, when we got in."
"Then Peterson's alive, and a slave to this Lemaire?"
"Ay. The cap'n said, the moment he proposed to take him up, Lemaire, was fierce for it; said that he owned a great many drogers and launches that carried sugar, coffee, tortoise-shell, and other truck, and he wanted him because he saw that he was a first-rate calker, and calculated to keep him calking all the time."
"Did you ever get your five hundred dollars?"
"No, sir; he put me off once or twice, and then cleared out while I was on a spree."
The captain now believed the story of Percival, for he had heard from the crew that he and the captain had quarrelled, and of his coming on board drunk in Martinique, and saying and doing just as Percival said he did; he knew, also, that he disappeared suddenly and left the country, although (through the influence of Isaac Murch) he was offered the command of a vessel in Wiscasset. "I think that your story seems probable. At any rate, I'll do this much. I'll make arrangements with the landlord in respect to your board for two weeks from to-day (no rum, mind, for you are through with the horrors), and your outfit when you go aboard some vessel. If I ever get hold of Peterson, or if he dies there, and I find that you have told me the truth, there will be time enough to do something more."