"I've come to give myself up, sir. I'm sick of it. Very likely you won't believe me, sir, but I joined under compulsion to save my life. I didn't dare leave them so long as Captain Bothwell——"
"Mr. Bothwell," corrected Blythe sharply.
"Mr. Bothwell, sir, I meant. He watched me as if I were a prisoner."
"I think I noticed you on my bridge with a revolver in your hand," the Englishman told him dryly.
"Yes, sir. But I fired in the air, except once when I shot the fireman who was killing Mr. Sedgwick over the wheel."
I turned in astonishment to Blythe.
"That explains it. Some one certainly saved me. If you didn't it must have been Smith."
"That's one point to your credit," Blythe admitted. "So now you want to be an honest man?"
"I always have been at heart, sir. I had no chance to come before. They kept me unarmed except during the fighting."
His head bandaged with a blood-soaked bandanna, his face unshaven and bloodstained, Smith was a sorry enough sight. But his eye met the captain's fairly. I don't think it occurred to any of us seriously to doubt him.