"Why should you figure on our meeting vessel after vessel until we no longer have a crew left?" I asked sharply.
"Because it proves that in the long run I shall be set free by my countrymen, and then will come the time when I'll have the upper hand once more."
"Well?" I asked, failing to grasp his meaning.
"Well?" he said with a laugh. "To save your own neck, why not make friends with me now? It isn't to be expected that you could set me ashore; but you might leave the door unlocked by accident, and when the time came that you were in the brig of a British man-of-war, I would do you a good turn."
It surprised me so much, this speech of Benson's, that I allowed him to finish, instead of checking the villain as I should have done when it first dawned upon me that he was proposing I play the traitor.
"Look you, Oliver Benson!" I cried, speaking slowly that the words would have more weight. "If I knew beyond a peradventure that I might save my own life by doing the wicked thing you propose, I would say 'no' with my last breath. If you so much as hint at such a proposition again I will go straight to the captain with the story, and then you may be certain he'll give you a taste of the cat."
"My turn will come before the Essex is out of this scrape, and of that there is no doubt," he replied venomously; and I questioned not but that he would wreak vengeance upon Phil and me whenever the opportunity presented itself.
I was yet in the dumps when Phil returned, refreshed by a sniff of the sea air and a glimpse of the sun; but did not think it well to give him an account of the conversation just held with Benson. In the first place it could do no good, and, secondly, might make him as dispirited as I had become; for a fellow may not speak of death or imprisonment, when one or the other is sure to come soon, without experiencing a certain heaviness of heart which does not tend to mental comfort.
If we were to suffer death or imprisonment as the conclusion of the cruise, there was no good reason for looking forward to it.
Phil reported that the Essex Junior could be seen in the offing; that the frigate was lying near the entrance of the harbor where she could be gotten under way whatever the direction of the wind, and that everything, save the taking down of the bulkheads aft, was in trim for a fight.