‘That’s jist the talk, now,’ said Terrence Moony. ‘What’s the use of hanging a man? thin he’s no use at all, nather to himself nor any body else. Arrah, it’s a mighty miserable use to put a man to.’
‘Who’d have thought that the young man, our commander God bless him,’ said an old weather-beaten mariner, would have had the mercy and discrimination to have done this piece of work. I’ve sailed upon the sea eight and thirty years, and I never saw a thing handsomer done on the ocean.’
Terrence here clapped his hands with delight. He had a perfect infatuation, a sort of monomania relative to Captain Channing, and the faithful fellow would have deemed it an enviable lot to have laid down his life for him at any moment.
‘Aain’t he a jewel, thin?’ said Terrence.
‘Look ye, messmates, did it ever occur to any of ye that our captain is a Pirate, after all,’ said the old seaman.
‘Hey? What’s that?’ said Terrence, ‘do you want me to kill you intirely, Mr. Bolt, or why the divil are ye calling the captain names?’
‘I don’t mean to cast any reflections upon Captain Channing. No, he’s a captain to live and die under; that all will agree To. But, supposing, mess-mates, a British man-of-war should come down from Boston harbor, here-a-way, and run us aboard and take the pretty little Constance, as she would do? I can tell you, brothers. Captain Channing would be dangling from the yard arm of that same man-of-war an hour afterwards as a Pirate!’
‘How the deuce can you make that out?’ asked one of the first speakers. ‘Ain’t the Colonies honestly at war with the English? and have we been cruising against any other nation but them? To be sure, we rummaged that bit of a prison there at Havana, you know, but we didn’t do any harm. A prison’s a prison, and a ship’s a ship; it can’t be piracy to storm a prison-house, dy’e see.’
‘True, brother, but didn’t our Captain ship in the brig Constance as second?’ asked the other speaker; ‘and ain’t he captain of her now by his own making, and ain’t the brig his? Can you tell what all this signifies? It looks to me like what a court-martial would call piracy, that’s all.’
‘Perhaps so; but we ain’t going for to be taken, you see,’ said a new speaker, ‘and that makes all the difference in the world’ This remark was received with a hearty laugh by all and the conversation took another turn.