'Sir,' said the officer, when he had read the letter through, 'this epistle is addressed to one Jonathan Polwhele. There is no merchant or planter of that name on the whole island.'
He gave me back the letter. 'If this,' he said, 'is all you have to show, there is no reason why you and your friends should not march with the rest.'
Truly, we had nothing else to show. Not only was there no one named Polwhele on the island, but there never had been any one of that name. Therefore it was plain that we had been tricked, and that the man George Penne was a villain. Alas! poor Barnaby. Where now were his cool cups and his pipe of tobacco? Then the officer beckoned to a gentleman—a sober and grave person—standing near, and spoke to him.
'Gentlemen,' said the merchant, 'permit me to read this letter. So, it is in the handwriting of Mr. George Penne, which I know well. There is here some strange mistake. The letter is addressed to Mr. Jonathan Polwhele; but there is no one of that name in the place. I am myself Mr. Penne's correspondent in this island. My name, gentlemen, is Sefton, not Polwhele.'
'Sir,' I said, 'do you know Mr. Penne?'
'I have never seen him. He consigns to my care once or twice a year a cargo of transported servants, being rogues and thieves, sent here, instead of to the gallows. He ships them to my care, I say, as he hath shipped the company arrived this morning; and I sell them for him, taking for my share a percentage, as agreed upon, and remitting to him the balance in sugar and tobacco.'
'Is there no letter from him?'
'There is a letter in which he advises me of so many rebels consigned to me in order to be sold. Some among them, he says, were captains and officers in Monmouth's army, and some are of good family, among whom he especially names Robin and Humphrey Challis. But there is not a word about ransom.'
'Sir,' I said, knowing nothing as yet of Alice and her money, 'two hundred guineas have been paid to Mr. Penne by the Rev. Philip Boscorel, Rector of Bradford Orcas, in the county of Somerset, for our ransom.'
'Nothing is said of this,' he replied gravely. 'Plainly, gentlemen, without despatches from Mr. Penne I cannot act for you. You have a letter; it is written by that gentleman; it is addressed to Mr. Polwhele; it says nothing about Barbadoes, and would serve for Jamaica or Virginia. So great a sum as two hundred guineas cannot have been forgotten. I exhort you, therefore, to patience until other letters arrive. Why, two hundred guineas would have gone far to redeem you all three, and to maintain you for a great while. Gentlemen, I am grieved for you, because there is for the present no help for it, but that you must go with the planter who hath bought you, and obey his orders. I will, however, send to Mr. Penne an account of this charge, and I would advise that you lose no time in writing to your friends at home.'