“Faith, an’ sure, that warn’t the worst of it nayther,” complained Garry in his humorous way. “Though the vain, silly ould crayture bate Banagher for flirtin’—an’, indade, bates ivviry other of her sex, God bless ’em, that I’ve ivver clapt eyes on yet—that quare little Frenchy chap, her husband, he, the little sparrow, must neades git jallous, an’ makes out it’s all my fault, an’, belave me, a nice toime I had o’ it altogether. At last I said to him, afther havin’ been more than usual exasperated by him, ‘If you want to foight me, begorrah, ye can begin as soon as you loike,’ at the same toime showin’ him me fists.”
“Ah, non, non, mon Dieu, non, note yat vay!” sez he, joompin’ away from me whin he caught soight o’ me fists. “I was mean ze duel and ze rapiere.”
“Not me, faith,” sez I. “If it’s duellin’ ye want you’ll have to go to another shop, Monsieur Parleyvoo, for it ain’t in my line. Allow me to till ye too, Monsieur Boisson, that if ye dare to hint at sich a thing ag’in whilst I’m in command of this ship, the ounly satisfaction ye’ll ivver have out of me in the rap-here way will be a rap on the h’id wid this shtick of moine here, you recollict, joist to thry the stringth of y’r craynium, begorrah! Faith, that sittled the matther, the little beggar turnin’ as pale as a codfish and goin’ below at onst, lookin’ very dejecthed an’ crestfallin. He nivver s’id another word afther that to me as long as he remained aboard, nor did Madame trouble me very much more wid her attenshions. On the contrary, bedad, from the day this happened till yestherday, whin she wor set ashore at the landing-stage yonder, she’d look moighty saur at me if we chanced to mate on deck—aye, faith, as saur as a babby that’s been weaned on butthermilk.”
“Why,” inquired the skipper, when we had both a good laugh at Garry and his account of the Boisson episode, “have they left, then, the ship for good?”
“Faith, yis, sor, bag an’ baggage, the blissid pair of ’em, an’ moighty pleased I wor to say the backs of ’em!”
“But how about the trial of those black devils, those pirates, then; won’t they be required as witnesses against the murderers?”
“No, sor,” replied Garry. “The polis officers that came aboard whin we got into dock sid they didn’t want monsieur nor madame neither, as they didn’t know a ha’porth of the jambolle, worse luck, they bein’ below all the toime. The magistrates think the two French sailors, who’re goin’ on foine by the same token, and the colonel, all of whom were on deck an’ saw everything that went on, would be sufficient witnisses aga’n the Haytian scoundrels.”
“Oh!” said the skipper, “have these men been brought up before the magistrates?”
“Aye, yestherday afthernoon, sor, an’ they’ve been raymanded, whativer that may mane—it ought to have been rayprimanded, I’m thinkin’, an’ a cat-o’-nine-tails, if they had their desarts - till next Tuesday! The magisthrates belayvin’ the ould Star of the North wid you, cap’en, wid the colonel aboard, to give ividence ag’st the mutineers, that they wouldn’t be in from New York afore then, not knowin’ what the ould barquey could do in the way of stayming as you an’ I do, sor, an’ that she’d arrive, faith, to-day!”
All happened as Garry O’Neil informed us, the Haytians and mutineer blacks of the Saint Pierre’s crew being brought up again before the magistrates the week following our arrival home, when, after hearing the additional evidence against them given by Colonel Vereker and the skipper, the six black and mahogany-coloured rascals were committed for trial at the next assizes, which we were told would not be held for another month, on the charge of “piracy and murder on the high seas.”