“I knows I can! I know—I knows—that which will put Jagger t’ makin’ brooms in the jail t’ St. Johns.”
“Ah!” the doctor drawled. “I wish,” said he, “that I knew that.”
“I knows,” Jonas pursued, doggedly, though it went against the grain, “that last week he wrecked the Jessie Dodd on the Ragged Edge at Wayfarer’s Tickle. I knows that she was insured for her value and fifteen hundred quintal o’ Labrador fish. I knows that they wasn’t a fish aboard. I knows that every fish is safe stowed in Jagger’s stores. I knows that the schooner lies near afloat at high tide. I knows that she’ll go t’ pieces in the winter gales. I knows——”
The doctor lifted his hand. He was broadly smiling. “You have told me,” said he, “quite enough. Go back to Wayfarer’s Tickle. Leave me,” he added, “to see that Jagger learns the worthy trade of broom-making. You have done me—great service.”
“Ah, but,” cried Jonas, gripping the doctor’s hand, “you cured my little Sammy!”
The doctor mused. “It may be difficult,” he said, by and by, “to fix this wreck upon Jagger.”
“Hist!” Jonas replied, stepping near. “The skipper o’ the Jessie Dodd,” he whispered, pointedly, solemnly closing one eye, “is wonderful weak in the knees.”
Doctor and I went then in the sloop to Wayfarer’s Tickle (the wind favouring us); and there we found the handsome Jessie Dodd lying bedraggled and disconsolate on the Ragged Edge, within the harbour: slightly listed, but afloat aft, and swinging with the gentle lift and fall of the water. We boarded her, sad at heart that a craft so lovely should come to a pass like this; and ’twas at once plain to us sailor-men that ’twas a case of ugly abandonment, if not of barratry—plain, indeed, to such as knew the man, that in conspiracy with the skipper Jagger had caused the wreck of the schooner, counting upon the isolation of the place, the lateness of the season, the simplicity of the folk, the awe in which they held him—upon all this to conceal the crime: as often happens on our far-off coast. So we took the skipper into custody (and this with a high hand) unknown to Jagger—got him, soon, safe into the sloop: so cowed and undone by the doctor’s manner that he miserably whined for chance to turn Queen’s evidence in our behalf. ’Twas very sad—nauseating, too: so that one wished to stop the white, writhing lips with a hearty buffet; for rascals should be strong, lest their pitiful complaints distress the hearts of honest men, who have not deserved the cruel punishment.
Jagger came waddling down to the landing, his great dog at his heels. “What you doin’,” he demanded, scowling like a thunder-storm, “with that man?”
“I next call your attention,” the doctor answered, with a smile of the most engaging sort, like a showman once I saw in the South, “to the most be-witching exhibit in this vast concourse of wonders. We have here—don’t crowd, if you please—we have here the skipper of the schooner Jessie Dodd, cast away on the Ragged Edge at Wayfarer’s Tickle. He is—and I direct your particular attention to the astounding fact—under arrest; being taken by a magistrate duly appointed by the authorities at St Johns. Observe, if you will, his—ah—rather abject condition. Mark his penitent air. Conceive, if you can, the—ah—ardour with which he will betray——”