‘The Arab Chief!’ exclaimed Tom, speaking slowly.
‘Did you know her, sir?’ asked Peter Green.
‘A fine clipper barque of six hundred and thirty tons,’ said Tom, speaking deliberately, with so sudden a change of voice that the islanders looked hard at him.
‘That’s the vessel,’ exclaimed Hagan.
‘You have her master and his mate on the island?’
‘Aye,’ replied Green.
‘Bates, hand me that bottle,’ said Tom. He poured out a quarter of a tumblerful of rum, mixed a little water with it, and swallowed the draught. ‘Do you know the names of the master and mate?’ he inquired, after a pause.
‘Very vell indeed, if dey vhas not pursers’ names,’ answered Green. ‘Von vhas Captain Samuel Rotch. Der odder vhas Meester Nodder. Der man vhas John Collins.’
‘I’ll return in a minute. I must look to the brig,’ said Tom, and walked out of the deck-house.
I was thunderstruck. I could not credit my senses. I looked at Mr. Bates, who looked at me, and I felt my face as white as the cloth upon the table. Rotch and Nodder on that island! The two fiends who had sworn away Tom’s liberty, made a felon of him, ruined, degraded, shipwrecked his life, forcing him down here to hide his guiltless head in the shadow and solitude of the towering ocean mountain upon whose shore calamity had cast them—those two incarnate devils within reach of an easy boat’s row, and themselves willing to ship in the brig and sail away in her! I thought my heart had stopped breathing. I could scarcely fetch a breath.