“You wrong me there,” said the pirate. “I deeply mourn for her loss, as you will understand shortly. But my time is short. I have resolved to give you some important information I possess respecting you; and as your companions may be useful, as witnesses of what I say, call them back. I will endeavour to make what little recompense I can for some of what I may look on as the smallest of my many crimes; and then I will get you to talk to me about that religion I have so long neglected. I must give you something of my history; for, strange as you may deem it, it is much mixed up with yours.”
“What!” I exclaimed, interrupting him, with astonishment, “your history mixed up with mine! Can you give an account of who I am?”
“Indeed I can, sir; and may put you in the way of regaining rights of which you have long been deprived. But hasten, summon your friends; you have no time, I feel, to lose.”
I rushed out, with my heart throbbing, and full of amazement, to call Prior and Fairburn. Before I returned, and before he could impart the information so important to me, the pirate might have breathed his last; yet my sad disappointment regarding the uncertainty of my sister’s fate prevented me feeling the satisfaction I should otherwise have experienced at thus being on the point of gaining the information I had all my life so eagerly desired. My friends speedily followed me, as much astonished as I was; and kneeling round the dying man, while Prior took out his tablet to make notes if required, we listened to the following strange story, which, with many interruptions, he narrated to us.
Chapter Twenty Five.
“I was born and bred in the State of New York. My father I never knew. My mother was kind and good; but she yielded to the dictates of her heart rather than to those of her judgment. She over-indulged me; she neglected to root out the bad seeds Satan is always striving to sow in the heart of man; and they grew up and flourished till they brought me to what I now am. I was of a roving, unsettled disposition. I required excitement. I believe that I might, with care, have been led into the right way, but that care was wanting. I was fond of excitement; when I could not obtain it in reality, I sought it in fiction, and therefore eagerly devoured all books which could satisfy my craving; but never did I look into one which would confer any real benefit upon me.
“The adventures of robbers and pirates delighted me most, and the history of a man, whose name I by chance bore, had a fatal influence on my destiny. I thought him a hero, and fancied it would be a grand thing to become like him.
“It did not occur to me, that the stories about him were mostly false; that the book was a fiction, dressed up to please the vicious palate of the uneducated public, and that the man himself was a miserable wretch, little better than a brute, who dared not think of the past or contemplate the future. What he was I am too well able to tell, from knowing what I myself now am. I was well educated; but my knowledge was ignorance. I soon grew weary of the trammels of home, and fancying that I should have greater licence afloat, with a vague notion that I would imitate some of the heroes of my imagination, I, without even wishing my mother farewell, ran away to sea. I had no difficulty in finding a ship; and if Satan himself had wished to choose one for me, he would not have fixed on a craft where I could more certainly have learned to follow his ways. The master set an example of wickedness, in which the crew willingly followed; and thus I grew up among the scenes of the grossest vice. It was not long before I engaged in transactions considered criminal by the laws. My companions and I succeeded so well without detection, that the rascally merchants, who had employed us, engaged us on several occasions for a similar object. At last our practices were suspected; and I was warned not to return to my native place. I accordingly took a berth on board a ship bound for India. Arrived there, I deserted, and joined an opium clipper. I soon got tired of that life, for there was some little danger at times, the excitement was but trifling, and the discipline was stricter than I liked. I got back, at length, to India, where there was much fighting going forward with the native princes; and European recruits being wanted, I enlisted, pretending I was an Englishman.