After he had been led through the settlement and a considerable way up the mountain in silence, the boatswain suddenly stopped and said: "Hallo! hold on; my timbers won't stand much more o' this sort o' thing. I was built for navigatin' the seas,—I was not for cruisin' on the land. We're far enough out of ear-shot, I s'pose in this here bit of a plantation. Come, what have ye got to say to me? You ain't a goin' to tell me the Freemason's word, are ye? For, if so, don't trouble yourself; I wouldn't listen to it on no account w'atever. It's too mysterious, that is, for me."
"Dick Price," said Corrie, looking up in the face of the seaman, with a serious expression that was not often seen on his round countenance, "you're a man."
The boatswain looked down at the youthful visage in some surprise.
"Well, I s'pose I am," said he, stroking his beard complacently.
"And you know what it is to be misunderstood, misjudged, don't you?"
"Well, now I come to think on it, I believe I have had that misfortune—'specially w'en I've ordered the powder-monkeys to make less noise; for them younkers never do seem to understand me. As for misjudgin', I've often an' over again heard 'em say I was the crossest feller they ever did meet with; but they never was more out in their reckoning."
Corrie did not smile; he did not betray the smallest symptom of power either to appreciate or to indulge in jocularity at that moment. But feeling that it was useless to appeal to the former experience of the boatswain, he changed his plan of attack.
"Dick Price," said he, "it's a hard case for an innocent man to be hanged."
"So it is, boy,—oncommon hard. I once know'd a poor feller as was hanged for murderin' his old grandmother. It was afterwards found out that he never done the deed; but he was the most incorrigible thief and poacher in the whole place; so it wasn't such a mistake, after all."
"Dick Price," said Corrie, gravely, at the same time laying his hand impressively on his companion's arm, "I'm a tremendous joker—awful fond o' fun and skylarkin'."