“I cannot help it, sir,” I replied, with a feeling of desperation. “Appearances are certainly against me, sir; I know not by whom those things were put into my bag. I did not put them in, and I did not know that they were there.”
“You said that another man was a witness of this affair,” said the captain, turning to Ley. “Who is he?”
Ley began to hum and haw and look uncomfortable. “I’d rather not say, sir,” whined out Ley, “if it is not necessary.”
“But it is necessary,” thundered out the captain, evidently annoyed at the man’s coolness and canting hypocrisy. “Who is he? or you get the four dozen awarded you.”
I had watched all along the countenance of Iffley. I felt sure that a plot had been formed against me, and that he was its framer and instigator. I saw that he began to grow uneasy at this stage of the proceedings.
“Who is this other man?” repeated the captain.
Ley saw that he must speak out, or that he would still get the punishment he was so anxious to escape. “There he is; Charles Iffley is the man, sir, who, besides those two, saw Weatherhelm go to his bag and put the stolen things into it.”
“How is this, Iffley? If you saw a man committing a robbery, it wag your duty to give notice of it, sir,” exclaimed the captain, in an angry voice, turning towards him.
“I am very sorry, sir,” replied Iffley. “I am aware of what I ought, strictly speaking, to have done, but I did not like to hurt the character of a shipmate. He always seemed a very respectable man, and I fully believed that I must have been mistaken. It is only now that the things are found in his bag that I can believe him guilty.”
“You are ready to swear to this?” asked the captain.