“A desprit man doos anyt’ing, massa.”
“Well. I shall soon find out, for the wind blows in that direction,” said the captain, wheeling about and returning to his ship.
Soon the sails were spread, the anchor weighed, the coral reef passed, and the good ship was leaping merrily over the sea in pursuit of the pirate, while Ebony was seated on the straw beside Rosco, expanding his mouth to an extent that it had never reached before, and causing the cavern to ring with uproarious laughter.
Chapter Sixteen.
It need scarcely be said that the man-of-war did not overtake the pirate’s canoe!
She cruised about for some days in the hope of falling in with it. Then her course was altered, and she was steered once more for Ratinga. But the elements seemed to league with Ebony in this matter, for, ere she sighted the island, there burst upon her one of those tremendous hurricanes with which the southern seas are at times disturbed. So fierce was the tempest that the good ship was obliged to present her stern to the howling blast, and scud before it under bare poles.
When the wind abated, Captain Fitzgerald found himself so far from the scene of his recent visit, and so pressed for time, as well as with the claims of other duties—possibly, according to Ebony, the capturing and hanging of other pirates—that he resolved to postpone his visit until a more convenient season. The convenient season never came. Captain Fitzgerald returned home to die, and with him died the memory of Rosco the pirate—at least as far as public interest in his capture and punishment was concerned—for some of the captain’s papers were mislaid and lost and among them the personal description of the pirate, and the account of his various misdeeds.
But Rosco himself did not die. He lived to prove the genuine nature of his conversion, and to assist Waroonga in his good work. As it is just possible that some reader may doubt the probability—perhaps even the possibility—of such a change, we recommend him to meditate on the fact that Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor, became Paul, the loving Apostle of the Lord.