Both ruffians laughed.
“I said the same thing myself once,” said the darker fellow of the twain, “and I could not out of twelve men, good and true, get a single soul to believe the story.”
[Original]
A couple of the sleepers wakened up. One of them stretched himself, yawned, and inquired, like a person still half asleep, “What’s all that gammon about innocence, forged notes, and blood-money?”
Why, Captain, this here cove is the chap who jumped off the bridge; and as he’s innocent, I suppose he’ll go quietly to them he bolted from last night, and get hanged to prove it.”
“More fool he,” observed the man whom they called captain. “Had I taken that plan to convince the world of my honesty, I should have been, ten years ago, dangling among the scare-crows that ornament Dogs’ Island. Let’s hear your story, youngster; you have told too little, or too much—enough to hang you twice over—so out with the remainder; we’re men of honour; though, if we swore it, the world would hardly credit, it.”
I had no motive to court concealment; to me, life and death were equally indifferent. The funner portion of my history I kept to myself, but freely narrated the villanous conspiracy of ——— ————, and his agents, to fix a charge of felony upon me first, and bring me to an ignominious end afterwards.
“I never heard of a plant better laid and executed,” said the captain, as I finished the detail of my last night’s adventures. “Never was man booked safer for the gallows; you had a close escape. Well, ‘touch and go’ is good pilotage, they say—I’ll tell you what to do. I sail for the coast of Guinea this evening; we’re short-handed; it’s a voyage that’s not much fancied, and I can’t persuade men enough to ship. They give a cowardly preference to low wages, and no fever; but you have no choice between that and hemp, you know. If it’s in you, Joe Barton is the man to make a sailor of you—What say ye?”