Thus equipped, the Wasp stood out to sea with a light breeze, just as the moon rose on the coral reef and cast a shower of sparkling silver across the bay.
Chapter Twenty One.
A Terrible Doom for an Innocent Man.
“So, you’re to be hanged for a pirate, Jo Bumpus, ye are—that’s pleasant to think of anyhow.”
Such was the remark which our stout seaman addressed to himself when he awoke on the second morning after the departure of the Wasp. If the thought was really as pleasant as he asserted it to be, his visage must have been a bad index to the state of his mind; for at that particular moment Jo looked uncommonly miserable.
The wonted good-humoured expression of his countenance had given place to a gaze of stereotyped surprise and solemnity. Indeed Bumpus seemed to have parted with much of his reason and all of his philosophy, for he could say nothing else during at least half-an-hour after awaking except the phrase—“So, you’re going to be hanged for a pirate.” His comments on the phrase were, however, a little varied, though always brief—such as—“Wot a sell! Who’d ha’ thought it! It’s a dream, it is, an ’orrible dream! I don’t believe it—who does? Wot’ll your poor mother say?”—and the like.
Bumpus had, unfortunately, good ground for making this statement.
After the cutter sailed it was discovered that Bumpus was concealed in Mrs Stuart’s cottage. This discovery had been the result of the seaman’s own recklessness and indiscretion; for when he ascertained that he was to be kept a prisoner in the cottage until the return of the Wasp, he at once made up his mind to submit with a good grace to what could not be avoided. In order to prove that he was by no means cast down, as well as to lighten the tedium of his confinement, Jo entertained himself by singing snatches of sea songs—such as, “My tight little craft,”—“A life on the stormy sea,”—“Oh! for a draught of the howling blast,” etcetera, all of which he delivered in a bass voice so powerful that it caused the rafters of the widow’s cottage to ring again.