He looked at me in a mightily puzzled fashion for a while. "No, sir; asking your pardon, sir," said he, "I don't remember you."
"What!" said I, "have you forgot Captain Mackra, and how you gave him a kick in the side when he lay on the deck of the Cassandra, down off Juanna?" As the fellow looked at me I saw him change from red to yellow and from yellow to blue; his jaw dropped, and his eyes started as though a spirit from the dead had risen up from the decks in front of him. "So," said I, "I see you remember me now."
"For God's sake, sir," said he, "don't ruin a poor devil who wants to make himself straight with the world. I was drunk when I kicked you, sir—the Lord knows I was; you wouldn't hang me for that, sir, would you?"
"That depends," said I, sternly, "upon whether you answer my questions without telling me a lie, as you did Captain Croker just now."
"I wish I may die, sir," said he, "if what I tell you ain't so. We all three of us left the Royal James last night—she was the Cassandra, sir, but we christened her a new name, and hoisted the Black Roger over her. We got scared, sir, at the way things was going since Ned England left us and Tom Burke turned captain; for he ain't the man England was, and that's the truth. All we ask now, sir, is to start fair and square again; and so be if we don't hang for this, I wish I may be struck dead, sir, if I, for one, go back to the bloody trade again. So all I want is to have a fair trial, and I begs of you, sir, that you won't say the word that would hang us all up to the yard-arms as quick as a wink." I am mightily afraid that I did not hear the last of the fellow's discourse, for one part of the speech that he had dropped went through me like a shot. "How is that?" I cried. "Was not Captain England with you when you deserted the ship?"
"Why, no, sir," says he. "You see, sir, when we sailed away from Juanna, Tom Burke began to move heaven and earth against England, and back of him he had all of the worst of the crew aboard. First of all he began setting matters by the ears because England and Ward had been wheedled into giving you—asking your pardon, sir—a good sound vessel and all them bales of cloth stuff. I tell you plain, sir, Burke would never have let you had 'em if he hadn't wanted to use the matter against England. Well, sir, one night Ward fell overboard—nobody knowed how—and there was an end of him. After that they weren't long in getting rid of England, I can tell you."
"Yes, yes," I cried, impatiently, "but how did you get rid of him?"
"Why, sir," says he, "they marooned him on a little island off the Mauritius, and six others with him; they was—"
"Never mind them," I cried; "but tell me, do you know what became of him?"
"Why, yes, sir," says he; "leastways we knew of him by hearsay; and this was how: About eight weeks ago we ran into a cove on the south shore of Mauritius to clean both ships, which had grown mightily foul. While we lay there on the careen a parcel of the crew who had been off hunting for game fetched back one of the self-same fellows we had marooned two months and more before. He told us that England and his shipmates had made a little craft out of bits of boards and barrel-staves, and had crossed over to the Mauritius in a spell of fair weather, though it was five leagues and more away."