The misunderstanding was an unfortunate affair for the culprit. Captain Truck felt a strong reluctance to deliver him up to justice after all they had gone through together, but the gentlemanlike conduct of the English commander, the consciousness of having triumphed in the late conflict, and a deep regard for the law, united on the other hand to urge him to yield the unfortunate and weak-minded offender to his own authorities.
"You do not claim a right to take him out of an American ship by violence, if I understand you, Captain Ducie?"
"I do not. My instructions are merely to demand him."
"That is according to Vattel. By demand you mean, to request, to ask for him?"
"I mean to request, to ask for him," returned the Englishman, smiling.
"Then take him, of God's name; and may your laws be more merciful to the wretch than he has been to himself, or to his kin."
Mr. Sandon shrieked, and he threw himself abjectly on his knees between the two captains, grasping the legs of both.
"Oh! hear me! hear me!" he exclaimed in a tone of anguish. "I have given up the money, I will give it all up! all to the last shilling, if you will let me go! You, Captain Truck, by whose side I have fought and toiled, you will not have the heart to abandon me to these murderers!"
"It's d--d hard!" muttered the captain, actually wiping his eyes; "but it is what you have drawn upon yourself, I fear. Get a good lawyer, my poor fellow, as soon as you arrive; and it's an even chance, after all, that you go free!"
"Miserable wretch!" said Mr. Dodge, confronting the still kneeling and agonized delinquent, "Wretch! these are the penalties of guilt. You have forged and stolen, acts that meet with my most unqualified disapprobation, and you are unfit for respectable society.--I saw from the very first what you truly were, and permitted myself to associate with you, merely to detect and expose you, in order that you might not bring disgrace on our beloved country. An impostor has no chance in America; and you are fortunate in being taken back to your own hemisphere."