'You'll behave like a man of honour,' said I, and to that he cried vehemently, 'I will.'
'Well, then,' said I, 'call out the boat, if you please; we're anxious to be home.'
'So you shall!' the captain shouted, 'and per ship—my barque Priscilla; and better men than you left, or I 'm no Christian.'
Temple said briskly, 'Thank you, captain.'
'You may wait awhile with that, my lad,' he answered; and, to our astonishment, recommended us to go and clean our faces and prepare to drink some tea at his table.
'Thank you very much, captain, we'll do that when we 're on shore,' said we.
'You'll have black figure-heads and empty gizzards, then, by that time,' he remarked. We beheld him turning over the leaves of a Bible.
Now, this sight of the Bible gave me a sense of personal security, and a notion of hypocrisy in his conduct as well; and perceiving that we had conjectured falsely as to his meaning to cast us on shore per ship, his barque Priscilla, I burst out in great heat, 'What! we are prisoners? You dare to detain us?'
Temple chimed in, in a similar strain. Fairly enraged, we flung at him without anything of what I thought eloquence.
The captain ruminated up and down the columns of his Bible.