"Why, what's come ower you, Peter?" asked Captain Flett. "D'ye know the craft?"
"Know her!" said Peter; "I should think I did. She was my own ship. I sailed in the Pilgrim as second mate for three years, and I started with her on that same last voyage."
It was now my turn to show surprise.
"Your ship, Peter!" I said.
"Yes," he continued. "We sailed out of Bristol in the month of February, 1830, bound for Copenhagen, calling at Iceland. But off the Lewis--or was it Cape Wrath?--I had some o' my bones broken, and they put me ashore at Kirkwall."
"Yes, she called at Kirkwall," I said. "I saw that on the chart."
"That was just before I joined the Falcon, captain," continued Peter, turning to Flett. "I mind them all, those dead folk, even to the dog that Ericson has told us about--a retriever named Bounce. Our skipper was a Dane named Thomassen, and his wife sailed with us that voyage. She was as fine a woman as ever I see in Denmark. Murray was the first mate, and the man Ericson saw through the porthole can have been none other than Jenkins, the supercargo; he belonged to Bristol. The only thing that puzzles me is the man that Ericson saw lying in the captain's room."
"Maybe he went aboard in Iceland, Peter--a passenger," suggested Flett. "Ye canna tell."
"Ay, that'll just be it," mused Peter, "a passenger, no doubt. Ay, I well believe that will just be what he was."
Lieutenant Fox at this point moved away from the circle to get a light for his pipe at the stove. He stood behind us listening to a conversation between Colin Lothian and Jack Paterson; and as Peter Brown lapsed into silent meditation I diverted my own attention to what Colin and Jack were saying.