VI.
Had a pistol been fired beside his head he could not have started more violently, and I had thought that he would have been utterly dumfounded; but he recovered himself with a most amazing quickness.
"Why, Captain Mackra," says he, with a laugh, "and is it you that welcome me back again, like the prodigal that I am?"
"Sir," said I, very sternly, "you will be pleased to answer my question, for I tell you plain that I am in no humor for jesting upon this occasion."
"And why should I not jest?" says he; "the whole business is a jest from first to last. As all this coil has been made about a very simple piece of business, I am forced to tell what I had not intended to tell, and which I am surprised that a man of your feeling should urge another into declaring. A man of parts, sir, may find favor with dusky beauties as well as with white; nor can I see what more harm there may be in visiting a sweetheart here than at Gravesend, which I doubt not you yourself have done, and that more than once."
I confess that I was vastly struck aback at this reasonable answer, and began for a moment to misdoubt that my suspicions of the captain were correct. For a while I stood, not knowing what to say, when of a sudden certain circumstances struck me that Captain Leach's words had not explained.
"And why," said I, "at a time of such anxiety and uncertainty, did you not ask permission to leave the ship?"
"I should think," says he, "a man of delicacy would have no need to ask such a question as that."
"Then tell me this," I cried, "why did you not direct your course towards the land instead of towards the open sea?
"Why," says he, laughing, and answering" with the utmost readiness, "I thought of nothing at all but of getting away from the ship as fast as possible, seeing that some hasty fool aboard was blazing away at me with a pistol or musquetoon, and that if I had been picking my course at the time I might have wound up the business with an ounce of lead in my brains, instead of enjoying this pleasant conversation in such good health."