"Get to your bunk then!" he commanded.
I obeyed.
"Who is he?" ... I heard the little customs man ask the skipper; "he doesn't talk like an Englishman."
"He isn't. He just a damn-fool Yankee boy I picked up in New York."
They had rounded Franz up and locked him away. The captain was determined to frustrate his little scheme for reimbursement, which he had by this time guessed.
I lie. I must tell the truth in these memoirs.
I had told on him.
But my motive was only an itch to see what would then take place. But when I saw that the issue would be an obvious one: that he would merely be spirited forth to sea again, and this time, forced to work, I felt a little sorry for the man. At the same time, I admit I wanted to observe the denouement myself, of his case ... and as I now intended to desert the ship, it would have to take place in Sydney.
So, on the second night of Franz's incarceration, when nearly everybody was away on shore-leave, I took the captain's bunch of keys, and I let the shanghaied man, the mutineer, the man from Alsace-Lorraine—out!