“It seems you know me,” I replied; “and concealment would be idle. It is, indeed, too true that all on board the slaver perished, save that negro who attends me, and myself.”
“Ay,” said the rover; “but you may recollect that a boy was missing the night before you sailed. I was that lost one; and, from weariness of a miserable life, and disgust at the horrible duty imposed upon me, of attending to the slave-hold, every feeling had revolted. I bolted from the vessel; escaped a fate that none survived but you; passed through a thousand hair-breadth adventures; and now command the Flambeau—the sweetest schooner that ever spread canvass to a breeze. Come, I bear you have lost every thing again but life; try your luck once more with Captain Raleigh; and rest assured, that he who succoured the fevered boy, shall secure the friendship of the commander of the Flambeau,—a craft by some called a privateer, and by others set down—may Heaven forgive them!—as nothing better than a pirate!”
I listened to the rover’s invitation. There was much that would induce a man, circumstanced as I was, to accept it; I seemed a being marked out for misfortune—for whom no happiness was predestined, and one, for whom fate had reserved the phials of her wrath. Captain Raleigh marked my hesitation.
“Come,” said he, “time presses. You brought me, and for little advantage, I regret, out of my course this morning, and I must regain it speedily. You are, as far as I am concerned, a free agent. Come with me—you will be welcome; stay where you are—a hundred dollars are at your service, to begin the world anew, and the best wishes of the runaway apprentice you nursed on his passage to the Gambia. I’ll rejoin you in five minutes—a time sufficiently long for a man to come to a decision, as well as if he dreamed over it for a twelvemonth.”
He turned, walked to another part of the vessel, and gave orders to his crew to man their boats, and prepare for returning to the schooner.
Dominique had been a silent, but a most attentive observer of my tête-à-tête with Captain Raleigh, and I beckoned him to approach.
“The hour for parting has arrived, Dominique, which, three days since, neither you nor I could have anticipated; but so fate wills it. A new and perilous career lies before me, the ocean surface must be my home, and its deeps shall furnish me a grave. England, the land of freedom, is your happier destination. Go, my tried and trusty friend; follow some one of brighter fortunes than him you leave; and may your future fate be what your attachment and fidelity to me so richly merit!”
The negro did not speak for a few moments—tears fell first upon the deck—at last, he turned a look of mild inquiry upon my face, and, in a broken voice, asked “in what he had offended me.”
I was assuring my sable follower how truly I estimated his worth, and how deeply I felt the necessity that should deprive me of his services, when Captain Raleigh joined us. He held a bag of dollars in his hand. “Here—catch,” he cried, as he tossed the money to me. “And now, ‘to be or not to be, ay, that’s the question.’ There’s Shakespeare for you. Confound the bard of won; ’twas he that made a rover of me; and but for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I, Harry Jones, had never been Captain Raleigh, but probably, at this blessed hour, a thriving citizen on Ludgate Hill, slicing off lutestring for a dowager, or assuring some pretty girl how beautifully the last new ribbon harmonized with the colour of her hair. Heigh-ho! I might have been happier. Happier! pshaw! nonsense. Yard and shears are only fit for woman’s hand; this is the tool for man’s”—and he touched the hilt of his cutlass. “But what’s the matter with your dark companion? Has he, too, lost some dollars by the accursed visit of the Frenchman?”
“I have lost more—far more,” replied the black, “the preserver of my life—the master whom for seven years I followed—my friend—my benefactor—him have I lost. He tells me that I must leave him—leave one from whom I thought death alone should separate me.”