Being fresh from Eton, I was not going to let our learned Scotch mate have it all his own way, when Weston resumed,—
"If you will listen, you shall hear a strange story in which I bore a prominent part."
"As the ghost?" said I.
"No; but you will soon acknowledge whether or not I had cause for fear."
And after he had replenished his glass and pipe, Captain Sam Weston began in this manner:
"About fifteen years ago, I found myself at Matanzas, in Cuba, the same port we are bound for now—adrift, without a ship, and almost without a penny in my pocket, among foreigners, Spaniards, and mulattoes, mestees and quadroons, black, white, and yellow. I had gone there as second mate of a ship from Boston, but the tyranny of our skipper wellnigh drove me mad. During the voyage he had nearly killed three of our men for being slow in sending down the top-gallant yards on a squally night. He beat them till they were black and blue with a handspike, and kept them for forty-eight hours, lashed to ringbolts in the lee-scuppers, that the sea might break over them, as he said, and cure their sores.
"When I interfered to save a poor cabin boy, whom he had hung by the heels from the main-boom, and was scourging with a heavy colt till his back was covered with blood, he produced a bowie knife and revolver, threatening to 'shoot or rip me up.'
"Just at that moment we were passing a Spanish ship of war which was at anchor in the bay, about half a mile from us, and had the red and yellow jack of Castile and Leon flying at his gaff peak. One of the poor fellows who had been so severely beaten was then in the foretop, so I hailed him to make a signal of distress to the Spaniard.
"In a moment his blue shirt was off and placed on the lift of the foreyard. This meant, Mr. Rodney, that as merchant seamen we appealed to the man-o'-war for protection, and wanted an armed boat's crew. Thank Heaven, such an appeal is never made in vain by a poor Jack of any country to a British man-o'-war, but the lubberly Spaniards never noticed the signal, or if so, never heeded it.
"The Yankee skipper uttered a fierce laugh.