Once in the channel we filled away to the south, scooting past the black upper-works of the Kut Sang, as we caught a stiff breeze from the north. Then Captain Riggs made me sleep.
It was long after daylight when the captain shook me, and right over us was a square-rigged ship. She was hanging in stays, and a boat was coming to us from her when I looked over the gunwale. She was an oil-carrier from Kobe to Manila.
"Four men out of the Kut Sang, ashore on a reef," said Captain Riggs, as we went over her side. "You may put the red-headed gentleman in irons, if you please, sir. Thank you."
And so we went back to Manila, where Petrak was hanged, and the only men who ever sailed with the Devil's Admiral and lived to tell of it were Captain Riggs, and Rajah, and myself, and the story was not written until after Captain Riggs had fallen asleep under the poplars of his Maine home and forgot to awaken. As I write the last of the tale, the wind howls in the chimney, and the fleecy fog is coming over Russian Hill from the Pacific, and hiding the ships in San Francisco Bay, and the last sheets from my pen are gathered up by Rajah, wearing in his girdle the kris that killed Thirkle.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Devil's Admiral, by Frederick Ferdinand Moore