"Safe fuddled wi' rum, surely. Lord, Job, you do be takin' uncommon risks for a hatful o' guineas—"
So they took me and, all unresisting, I was dragged amidships beneath the main yard where a noose was for my destruction; and though hanging had seemed a clean death by contrast with that I had so lately escaped at the obscene hands of this loathly blackamoor, yet none the less a sick trembling took me as I felt the rope about my neck, insomuch that I sank to my knees and closed my eyes.
Kneeling thus and nigh to fainting, I heard a sudden, quick patter of light-running feet, a gasping sigh and, glancing up, beheld Job before me, also upon his knees and staring down with wide and awful eyes at an ever-spreading stain that fouled the bosom of his shirt; and as he knelt thus, I saw above his stooping head the blue glitter of a long blade that lightly tapped his brawny neck.
"The noose—here, Diccon, here, yes!"
As one in a dream I felt the rope lifted from me and saw it set about the neck of Job.
"So! Ready there? Now—heave all!"
I heard the creak of the block, the quick tramp of feet, a strangling cry, and Job the quartermaster was snatched aloft to kick and writhe and dangle against the moon.
"Diccon, we have lost our quartermaster and we sail on the flood; you are quartermaster henceforth, yes. Ha—look—see, my Englishman is sick! Dowse a bucket o' water over him, then let him be ironed and take him forward to the fo'castle; he shall serve you all for sport—but no killing, mind." Thus lay I to be kicked and buffeted and half-drowned; yet when they had shackled me, cometh the man Diccon to clap me heartily on the shoulder and after him Resolution to nod at me and blink with his single, twinkling eye:
"Oh, friend," quoth he, "Oh, brother, saw ye ever the like of our Captain
Jo? Had Davy been here to-day he might perchance ha' wrote a psalm to her."
That morning with the flood tide we hove anchor and the Happy Despatch stood out to sea and, as she heeled to the freshening wind, Job's stiffening body lurched and swayed and twisted from the main yard. And thus it was I saw the last of my island.