“Come, my good sir,” replied the rover, “you need not be so snappish; though, ’pon my soul, the loss of thirty thousand dollars is nothing to joke about. But stop; have I ever seen that face before?”
“That question you can best resolve yourself,” I answered; “yours has been seen by me, I fancy, for the first time; and, let me add, worthy captain, I sincerely hope for the last one too.”
“Indeed! would it be too much trouble to ask you to look at it a second time?”
I complied carelessly with the captain’s wish, and examined the features and figure of this new intruder. The face was swarthy, sunburnt, and had, what the Irish happily term, “a devil-may-care” expression. The person of the stranger was square and well-compacted; his dress was composed of cotton and nanquin—textures best suited to the climate. In the silken sash which bound his waist, he had secured a watch, a dagger, and a brace of pistols; all apparently very valuable. He wore a jewel on his finger; diamond rings in either ear, and a gold-laced hat, fit for a vice-admiral, completed his showy and singular costume. He was a very young man, apparently not more than five-and-twenty.
“And pray, Mr. Jones, or Mr. Thompson, or by whatever name besides you called yourself in the Fancy, six years ago upon the coast, now that you hwe finished your survey, may I inquire if you can yet recollect an old companion?”
I started. He had mentioned the slaver’s name correctly, and also the false appellation by which I was known on board that accursed vessel.
“I have heard of that slave-ship,” I replied; “she foundered at sea, and none escaped but—”
“You and myself,” responded the stranger carelessly.
“You labour under a mistake, she perished by fire, and none escaped—
“But you; and how you managed it I don’t know. As for me, I gave leg-bail in the Gambia. Come, Jones, Thompson, Robinson, or any thing you please to call yourself, fear nothing from me. I owe you a debt of gratitude. I shipped myself in that villanous slaver, a runaway-apprentice; and, when struck down by fever, and dying of thirst upon my passage out, the only hand in all that rascally ship’s company, to whom I was indebted for a drink of water to slake my burning thirst, was your’s; and now, seven years after, I survive to prove to you that kindness to a destitute boy has not been, and shall not be forgotten.”