"No offense," I said, "I was just going to tell you of the fun we had, my mates and I, when we were prisoners in France, and how we escaped and had a running fight with Duguay-Trouin--"
"That's a good un!" he cried.
"Hark to him, Jack: says he had a fight with Doggy Trang."
"Let's hear about it," cries the man he had called Jack.
Whereupon I launched out into the story of our escape, made them laugh heartily by my description of our dealings with the French captain, and so brought them, as I thought, to a more reasonable temper.
"And now, seeing that we're in a manner shipmates, you won't refuse to answer a simple question, I'm sure," I said. "What house is this?"
"No harm in that, Bill," says Jack. "'Tis the house of the second overseer of this 'ere plantation, and much good may it do you to know it."
Having thus broken the ice, I succeeded, before I had finished my meal, in drawing sundry other information out of them. I learned that the place of my imprisonment was some two miles from Mistress Lucy's house, being situate at the extreme verge of the sugar plantation. The men knew nothing about Mistress Lucy, or of what went on at the house, having recently been brought up by Vetch, along with a dozen or more shipmates, from a brig belonging to their employer that now lay in a cove on the north of the island some ten miles away. They made no bones about acknowledging that they had formed part of the crew of a buccaneer vessel and had been hired by Vetch for a month's service on shore, which suited them very well, since they had nothing to do, good pay, and were given a liberal allowance of bumbo, which was, I discovered, a concoction of rum and water, sugar and nutmeg.
"Well, now," says I, thinking the time had come for my proposal, "I don't ask you what pay you are getting, but whatever it is, I will double it if you'll let me loose, and help me to get down to Spanish Town."
"Come up, now!" says Bill, "d'ye think to gammon us? We know what a lieutenant's wages is, we do, and 'twould take a dozen of you together to pay us enough for that there job."