“Now, sir: you are, or were, first officer of this brig?”
The prisoner, standing between his two guards, gripped his stocking cap nervously. “Will you please to tell me, sir, if my father is killed?”
“Seth, my lad, I want room.” One of the guards, a strapping youngster, stepped and flung open a pane of the stern window. Captain Seccombe spat out of it with nonchalant dexterity before answering—
“I guess he is. Brig’s name?”
“The Lady Nepean.”
“Mail packet?”
“Yes, sir; leastways—”
“Now, see here, Mister First Officer Colenso junior; it’s a shortish trip between this and the yard-arm, and it may save you some su-perfluous lying if I tell you that in August, last year, the Lady Nepean packet, Captain Colenso, outward bound for Halifax, met the Hitchcock privateer off the Great Bank of Newfoundland, and beat her off after two hours’ fighting. You were on board of her?”
“I tended the stern gun.”
“Very good. The next day, being still off the Banks, she fell in with Commodore Rodgers, of the United States frigate President, and surrendered to him right away.”