“I fear, sir,” returned the mate after some hesitation, “that the crew will be apt to mutiny, if you insist on going there. They are tired of this mixture of trade with free-roving, and are anxious to sail in seas where we shall be more likely to fall in with something worth picking up.”
“Stop, Redford, I want to hear no more. The crew shall go where I please as long as I command them; and you may add that I will guarantee their being pleased with my present plan. There, don’t refer to this subject again. Where did you say the British cruiser was last seen?”
“Bearing nor’-east, sir, hull down—on our starboard quarter. I called you at once, but she had changed her course to nor’-west and we lost sight of her.”
“That will just suit us,” said Rosco, going into his private cabin and shutting the door.
Well might the pirate captain be perplexed at that time, for he was surrounded by difficulties, not the least of which was that his men were thoroughly dissatisfied with him, and he with them. He did not find his crew sufficiently ready to go in for lucrative kidnapping of natives when the chance offered, and they did not find their captain sufficiently ferocious and bloodthirsty when prizes came in their way. Nevertheless, through the influence of utter recklessness, contemptuous disregard of death, and an indomitable will, backed by wonderful capacity and aptitude in the use of fist, sword, and pistol, he had up to this time held them in complete subjection.
In his heart Rosco had resolved to quit his comrades at the first favourable opportunity, and, with this intent had been making for one of the most out-of-the-way islands in the Pacific—there to go and live among the natives, and never more to see the faces of civilised men—against whom he had sinned so grievously. His intentions were hastened by the fact that a British man-of-war on the Vancouver station, hearing of his exploits, had resolved to search for him. And this cruiser did in fact come across his track and gave chase; but being a poor sailer, was left behind just before the pirate had reached Ratinga, where, as we have seen, she put in for water.
The discovery there made, as he supposed, that Antonio Zeppa had recovered his reason and returned home, not only amazed and puzzled Rosco, but disconcerted part of his plan, which was to find Zeppa, whose image had never ceased to trouble his conscience, and, if possible, convey him to the neighbourhood of some port whence he could easily return to Ratinga. It now struck him that, since Zeppa was no longer on Sugar-loaf Island, that spot would be as favourable a one as could be found for his purpose, being far removed from the usual tracks of commerce. He would go there, take to the mountains as Zeppa had done before him, leave his dissatisfied comrades to follow their own devices, and, crossing over to the other side of the island, ingratiate himself as well as he could with the natives, grow beard and moustache, which he had hitherto shaved, and pass himself off as a shipwrecked sailor, should any vessel or cruiser touch there.
“And shipwrecked I am, body, soul, and spirit,” he muttered, bitterly, as he sat in his cabin, brooding over the past and future.
Leaving him there, and thus, we will return to Ratinga, the peaceful inhabitants of which were destined at this time to be tickled with several little shocks of more or less agreeable surprise.
One of these shocks was the sudden disappearance of Zariffa, the native missionary’s brown baby. It was an insignificant event in itself, and is only mentioned because of its having led indirectly to events of greater importance.