“Ay,” says he, “but they wan’t there until now. We raised a false alarm for to get your honour away safely.”
“Then how came the Morattys?” I asked, with much amazement.
“Nay, that you must ask of their father the devil, for I can’t tell,” says he.
But I preferred to ascribe this marvel rather to the direction of Almighty God, who, knowing, as I have no doubt, that the confusion raised by a false alarm should not suffice for to convey me away to a place of safety, used the designs of the Morattys to bring ’em to that spot at the very time they were needed.
The sailors would willingly have stayed long watching the fight, but their leader called them away, and we rowed down the river in the boat, I being laid in the bottom and covered with a sail. So at last we come to a ship, and when we went on board of her, I seemed to myself to have seen her before, but so confused was I in my intellectuals that I could neither recollect when nor how. Then the master carried me into his cabin, and poured out for me a dram of cordial water, and bade me drink it, and thereafter slapped me on the back and demanded of me whether I had forgot my old friends. But I could only gaze upon him bewildered, and answer nothing.
“Alack, poor lad!” cried he; “have the devilish wretches robbed you of your wits? Sure this is a sorry sight. Poor lad! poor lad!” and the great tears rolled down his face for very pity.
“Sir,” says I, “I entreat your pardon; but though your countenance seem familiar to me, yet I can’t recall your name.”
“Tom Freeman is my name,” says he, “skipper of the Boscobel, the tightest craft as ever left Graves-End. You sailed with me to the Indies, Master Ned, for all you have forgot me now, and you were used to talk of some day coming with me to the furthest East.”
But by this time I had recollected my old friend Captain Freeman, and was embracing him most heartily, and crying shame on my dulled and blind eyes, that had not known him at first. And so glad was he to find that I had not, as he feared, been bereft by cruel usage of my senses, that he forgave me willingly my seeming callousness. Then he bade me sit down and tell him all that had befell me since the day I left Surat, though first he asked my pardon while he went on deck and bade the seamen keep good watch, and let no vessel nor boat approach without alarming him. So I told my story as shortly as I might, and then inquired of him concerning the happy chance that brought him to the burning-place, since I had not thought him one to go to look on willingly or for sport at an Aucto de Fie. And when I asked him this, he brake out in a great laugh.
“Why,” said he, “we heard from one of those Inquisition dogs ’emselves what was to be done—dragged it out of him, indeed, for he had no choice.”