That afternoon, as I was down below at dinner, I heard the men talking about this curious ship.
“I wonder,” said one, “why our captain looked so sweet on yon swallow-tailed super-cargo o’ pigs and Gospels. If it had been an ordinary trader, now, he would have taken as many o’ the pigs as he required and sent the ship with all on board to the bottom.”
“Why, Dick, you must be new to these seas if you don’t know that,” cried another. “The captain cares as much for the gospel as you do (an’ that’s precious little), but he knows, and everybody knows, that the only place among the southern islands where a ship can put in and get what she wants in comfort, is where the gospel has been sent to. There are hundreds o’ islands, at this blessed moment, where you might as well jump straight into a shark’s maw as land without a band o’ thirty comrades armed to the teeth to back you.”
“Ay,” said a man with a deep scar over his right eye, “Dick’s new to the work. But if the captain takes us for a cargo o’ sandal-wood to the Feejees he’ll get a taste o’ these black gentry in their native condition. For my part I don’t know, an’ I don’t care, what the gospel does to them; but I know that when any o’ the islands chance to get it, trade goes all smooth an’ easy; but where they ha’nt got it, Beelzebub himself could hardly desire better company.”
“Well, you ought to be a good judge,” cried another, laughing, “for you’ve never kept any company but the worst all your life!”
“Ralph Rover!” shouted a voice down the hatchway. “Captain wants you, aft.”
Springing up the ladder I hastened to the cabin, pondering as I went the strange testimony borne by these men to the effect of the gospel on savage natures;—testimony which, as it was perfectly disinterested, I had no doubt whatever was strictly true.
On coming again on deck I found Bloody Bill at the helm, and as we were alone together I tried to draw him into conversation. After repeating to him the conversation in the forecastle about the missionaries, I said,—
“Tell me, Bill, is this schooner really a trader in sandal-wood?”
“Yes, Ralph, she is; but she’s just as really a pirate. The black flag you saw flying at the peak was no deception.”