“Yes, Spear.”
“Bosh, man, you are jesting with us! You mean that you have him in his photograph, or something.”
“No; I mean that I have him in person.”
“Then there must be some other play upon the words. Have Spear personally present on this remote Indian isle! You might as well boast that you have Davis here!—as you may have in his ambrotype, just as you have Spear.”
“I assure you that the captain of the Sea Scourge is on this island, in this house, and waiting to surrender himself to you!”
“For Heaven’s sake, explain yourself! Read me the answer to this riddle before my head goes!” said Captain Yetsom, while his officers listened with the same sort of curiosity they might have felt in an ingenious enigma, or as if the case had been put to them in conundrum style, as: “Why have we the captain of the Sea Scourge here?” and they were trying to guess the answer, or expecting one from the propounder of the question that should set the room in a roar.
“I will explain,” said Justin, and turning to Lieutenant Ethel, he continued:
“You may remember, lieutenant, I told you yesterday, in reply to an observation of yours, that the Xyphias had not been the only ship which had passed here, in the two years and a half we have spent on this island—that there had been another ship?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“That other ship was the Sea Scourge, driven out of her course by a furious gale. She came into our cove sailing under the rebel flag, which greatly perplexed us, as we had never seen or heard of it.”