"The blows were redoubled, and I continued to knock and to shout. At last a plank of the inner sheathing was started in the side of one of the starboard berths, and a vivid stream of light burst blindingly into the darkness around me. Springing to it, I thrust up my head and found alongside a boat full of men, who had seen the capsized cutter from their vessel, and had come off to reconnoitre. They had fortunately heard me shouting or hammering in my prison, and by means of a hatchet proceeded to investigate the cause of this noise.
"They drew me out, and then judge of my horror, when the first man whose eyes encountered mine, was the gunner's mate, sitting pale as death in the stern-sheets of the boat with the tiller-ropes in his hands.
"On beholding him, I tried to leap into the sea, but was seized and lashed to the boat-thwarts by a rope, and while the foundered cutter, on the air escaping as if with a heavy sigh, from her cabin, filled and sank out of sight, I was conveyed on board the vessel of my deliverers. She proved to be the George Third of Bristol a privateer brig armed with sixteen 12-pounders, and her crew had picked up the gunner's mate a quarter of an hour after I had chucked him overboard, stunned but not killed.
"I knew that my life was not worth a tester now unless I played a desperate game, and I played it well; for I performed so many pranks, that conceiving they were produced by insanity and remorse, instead of reeving me up to the foreyard-arm as the gunner's mate urged, the privateersmen marooned me on the first land they came to, my old enemy only obtaining leave to bind me well to the stump at which you found me; and now, as I am thirsty after this precious yarn of blood and desperation—this long talkee-talkee as the niggers call it—I shall have one more suck at my old toddy-tree, and then turn into my hole for the night."
Such was the bare narrative of crime related to me by Knuckleduster. He was certainly a pleasant companion to have on that lonely island, and I had no reason to doubt the veracity of his atrocious revelations, for he was too inebriated to invent—if he had the power of invention—and situated as we were, on that wild Caribean isle, he cared nothing for me or my opinion of him.
CHAPTER LVII.
A SAIL IN SIGHT!
I had been more than a month and a half in my solitude when the time of my deliverance drew near.
Miserable though my situation had been when alone on the island, on consideration I believed myself more comfortable than with such a companion. His aspect now annoyed, his conversation disgusted, and his bearing at times enraged me.
I remember him telling me of a mutinous seaman, who had been marooned by pirates on a lonely island in the great Gulf of Mexico. There he lived for years, till hope had died within him, till his hair became grey, and he had long ceased to look for a passing ship.