"What have you especially to dread? I know a reward has been offered for your apprehension, but not for what precise offense."
"The unfortunate business in St. Michael's Bay."
"Good God! The newspaper was right, then! But neither of the wounded men have died, I hear, so that—that—"
"The mercy of transportation may, you think, be substituted for the capital penalty." He laughed bitterly.
"Or—or," I hesitatingly suggested, "you may not be identified—that is, legally so."
"Easily, easily, Warneford. I must not trust to that rotten cable. Neither the coast-guard nor the fellows with me know me indeed as Hendrick, ex-lieutenant of the royal navy; and that is a secret you will, I know, religiously respect."
I promised to do so: the painful interview terminated; and in about two hours the captain and surviving crew of Les Trois Frères, and Mr. Samuel Sparkes, were safely on board the Rose. Hendrick had papers to arrange; and as the security of his person was all I was responsible for, he was accommodated in my cabin, where I left him to confer with the Guernsey authorities, in whose bailiwick Jethon is situated. The matter of jurisdiction—the offenses with which the prisoners were charged having been committed in England—was soon arranged; and by five o'clock in the evening the Rose was on her way to England, under an eight-knot breeze from the southwest.
As soon as we were fairly underweigh, I went below to have a last conference with unfortunate Hendrick. There was a parcel on the table directed to "Mrs. Hendrick, Lostwithiel, Cornwall, care of Lieutenant Warneford." Placing it in my hands, he entreated me to see it securely conveyed to its address unexamined and unopened. I assured him that I would do so; and tears, roughly dashed away, sprang to his eyes as he grasped and shook my hand. I felt half-choked; and when he again solemnly adjured me, under no circumstances, to disclose the identity of Captain Pickard and Lieutenant Hendrick, I could only reply by a seaman's hand-grip, requiring no additional pledge of words.
We sat silently down, and I ordered some wine to be brought in. "You promised to tell me," I said, "how all this unhappy business came about."
"I am about to do so," he answered. "It is an old tale, of which the last black chapter owes its color, let me frankly own, to my own hot and impatient temper as much as to a complication of adverse circumstances." He poured out a glass of wine, and proceeded at first slowly and calmly, but gradually, as passion gathered strength and way upon him, with flushed and impetuous eagerness to the close: