Had a ghost risen from the grave to confront him, Mr. Pryse could not have looked more aghast or terror-stricken, when Evan stepped from behind into the light, with the faded receipt in his hand.
Baffled, defeated, confronted, as it were, by the dead.
Mr. Pryse shrieked aloud, fell on his knees, covering his eyes with his quivering hands.
'You here?—you? I fancied you had gone down with the Osprey.'
'You hear him, gentlemen? You hear him? He do be owning his share in kidnapping me! No, you smuggling old rogue, when the Osprey went all to pieces on the rocks at the Land's End with its drunken crew and cargo—I, yes indeed I, gentlemen, who had been dragged on board bound like a thief—I did be the only one saved. I had been sent up aloft to punish me because I would not join the wicked crew, and when the mast did go overboard, I held on for my very life. I did be picked up the next day by an outward-bound East Indiaman, when there was little life left in me. But I wasn't to be drowned till I'd settled scores with this old villain here, that did send me adrift with rogues like himself, and to rob the widow blackened my honest name.
'No, Mr. Pryse, though I've been sailing the seas all these sorrowful years in one craft or other, cuffed, kicked, half-starved, used worse than a dog, and never able to make my way back to my sweetheart or home, if it had not been for another shipwreck I'd never have been here now. A Liverpool trader took me and two shipmates off a raft in the middle of the ocean, when we was half-mad with hunger and thirst, and the good captain, God bless him, sent me on shore at Fishguard, to make my way home to my sweetheart as quick as I could. And I didn't have to beg my way, for I had got money hid under my belt. And I do be thanking God sirs, for bringing me here in time to confound this wicked old shivering coward. I do be feeling as if I could shake every bone out of his ugly skin, but Ales bids me leave him to God and his master.'
''Deed, he deserves kicking from the top of the hill to the bottom,' thrust in fiery William.
Not a word had the detected steward spoken, but his features and his lean fingers worked vindictively, as if longing to grasp the speakers' throats.
All at once he shrieked out—
'That receipt's a forgery, a vile forgery. Look at it, gentlemen. That paper has never been in salt water. Ugh! How could a common sailor keep a bit of paper unworn and dry for six years, and through two shipwrecks? It is absurd.'