“Come, Captain!” exclaimed John Gough, “I bear you no malice. Though you have been rather hard upon us, we won’t leave you to starve.”
“He’s a deuced deal better off than he desarves to be,” cried a man from the boat, whom I at once recognised as the fellow on whom I had drawn my knife for hurting Nero. “If we had made him walk the plank, as I proposed, I’m blowed if it wouldn’t have been much more to the purpose than putting him on this here island, with lots o’ prog, and everything calkilated to make him and his domineering officers comfortable for the rest of their days.”
“Hold your tongue, you mutineering rascal,” exclaimed the Captain, angrily; “a rope’s end at the yard-arm will be your deserts before long.”
“Thank ye kindly, Captain,” replied the fellow, touching his hat in mockery. “But you must be pleased to remember I ain’t caught yet; and we means to have many a jolly cruise in your ship, and get no end o’ treasure, before I shall think o’ my latter end; and then I means to die like a Christian, and repent o’ my sins, and make a much more edifying example than I should exhibit dangling at the end of a rope.”
The men laughed, the Captain muttered something about “pirates and mutineers,” but the rest of the officers wisely held their tongues.
I now noticed an elderly man of very respectable appearance, who was not pinioned like the rest. His hair was quite white, his complexion very pale, and he looked like one oppressed with deep sorrow and anxiety. He rose from his seat in the boat, and was assisted out by John Gough.
“I’m very sorry that we are obliged to leave you here, Mr Evelyn,” said Gough, “but you see sir, we have no alternative. We couldn’t keep you with us, for many reasons; and therefore we have been obliged to make you a sharer in the fate of our officers.”
“And werry painful this is to our feelings, sir, you may believe,” said another of the mutineers, mockingly. “I’m quite moloncholy as I thinks on it.”
The men again laughed; but the person so addressed walked to the side of the Captain without making any observation. The other captives also left the boat in silence. They were eight in all, but four of them were evidently common seamen by their dress—the others were officers. All were well-made strong men.
“What a precious pretty colony you’ll make, my hearties!” exclaimed one of the mutineers, jeeringly, as he helped to land a cask, and some other packages, that they had brought with them. “It’s a thousand pities you ain’t got no female associates, that you might marry, and settle, and bring up respectable families.”