Nearly six months after leaving port with provisions enough for one; with her rotten ratlines hanging in little tags, her jury smoke-stack idle between the patched sails that seemed as though one more puff of wind would tear them from the battered yards, her spewing sides kept together with cables, and her broken bulwarks level with the water—a nightmare vessel manned by ghosts—she crawled into the roadstead at Port of Spain.
* * * * *
For a few years after, a ragged white man haunted the drink-shops of the Islands and hung about the ports—a man without a ship. The owners of the Spirito Santo were broken by the safe return of that faked cargo, but they had passed the word round that her skipper was to be broken too. He who had been so self-controlled in the old unregenerate days now drank steadily, but it was only when he was very drunk he talked. And even then it was difficult to make out what he said—it was all such a jumble of some strange fight between two ships, and of how the ways of the Lord were so mysterious that it was often impossible for a man to tell upon which side righteousness might be found.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Here follows in the original a minute description of the post-mortem.
[B] Pronounced Roughneck.
[C] At that date Prisoner's Counsel was not allowed to make a speech for the defence.
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