Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader

Corrie went forward and pulled Dick by the sleeve.

“Hallo! boy, what d’ye want with me?” said the boatswain.

“I want to speak to you.”

“Well, lad, fire away.”

“Yes, but I want you to come with me,” said the boy, with an anxious and rather mysterious look.

“Very good!—heave ahead,” said the boatswain, getting up, and following Corrie with a peculiarly nautical roll.

After he had been led through the settlement and a considerable way up the mountain in silence, the boatswain suddenly stopped, and said—“Hallo! hold on; my timbers won’t stand much more o’ this sort o’ thing. I was built for navigatin’ the seas,—I was not for cruisin’ on the land. We’re far enough out of ear-shot, I s’pose, in this here bit of a plantation. Come, what have ye got to say to me? You ain’t a-goin’ to tell me the Freemasons’ word, are ye? For, if so, don’t trouble yourself, I wouldn’t listen to it on no account w’atever. It’s too mysterious that is for me.”

“Dick Price,” said Corrie, looking up in the face of the seaman, with a serious expression that was not often seen on his round countenance, “you’re a man.”

The boatswain looked down at the youthful visage in some surprise.

“Well, I s’pose I am,” said he, stroking his beard complacently.

“And you know what it is to be misunderstood, misjudged, don’t you?”

“Well, now I come to think on it, I believe I have had that misfortune—specially w’en I’ve ordered the powder-monkies to make less noise, for them younkers never do seem to understand me. As for misjudgin’, I’ve often an’ over again heard ’em say I was the crossest feller they ever did meet with, but they never was more out in their reckoning.”

Corrie did not smile; he did not betray the smallest symptom of power either to appreciate or to indulge in jocularity at that moment. But feeling that it was useless to appeal to the former experience of the boatswain, he changed his plan of attack.

“Dick Price,” said he, “it’s a hard case for an innocent man to be hanged.”

“So it is, boy,—oncommon hard. I once know’d a poor feller as was hanged for murderin’ his old grandmother. It was afterwards found out that he’d never done the deed; but he was the most incorrigible thief and poacher in the whole place, so it warn’t such a mistake after all.”

“Dick Price,” said Corrie, gravely, at the same time laying his hand impressively on his companion’s arm, “I’m a tremendous joker—awful fond o’ fun and skylarkin’.”

“’Pon my word, lad, if you hadn’t said so yourself, I’d scarce have believed it. You don’t look like it just now, by no manner o’ means.”

“But I am though,” continued Corrie; “and I tell you that in order to shew you that I am very, very much in earnest at this moment; and that you must give your mind to what I’ve got to say.”

The boatswain was impressed by the fervour of the boy. He looked at him in surprise for a few seconds, then nodded his head, and said, “Fire away!”

“You know that Gascoyne is in prison!” said Corrie.

“In course I does. That’s one rascally pirate less on the seas, anyhow.”

“He’s not so bad as you think, Dick.”

“Whew!” whistled the boatswain. “You’re a friend of his, are ye?”

“No; not a friend, but neither am I an enemy. You know he saved my life, and the lives of two of my friends, and of your own captain, too.”

“Well, there’s no denying that; but he must have been the means of takin’ away more lives than what he has saved.”

“No, he hasn’t,” cried Corrie, eagerly. “That’s it, that’s just the point; he has saved more than he ever took away, and he’s sorry for what he has done; yet they’re going to hang him. Now, I say, that’s sinful—it’s not just. It shan’t be done if I can prevent it; and you must help me to get him out of this scrape—you must indeed, Dick Price.”

The boatswain was quite taken aback. He opened his eyes wide with surprise, and putting his head to one side, gazed earnestly and long at the boy as if he had been a rare old painting.

Before he could reply, the furious barking of a dog attracted Corrie’s attention. He knew it to be the voice of Toozle. Being well acquainted with the locality of Alice’s tree, he at once concluded that she was there, and knowing that she would certainly side with him, and that the side she took must necessarily be the winning side, he resolved to bring Dick Price within the fascination of her influence.

“Come, follow me,” said he; “we’ll talk it over with a friend of mine.”

The seaman followed the boy obediently, and in a few minutes stood beside Alice.

Corrie had expected to find her there, but he had not counted on meeting with Poopy and Jo Bumpus.

“Hallo! Grampus, is that you?”

“Wot! Corrie, my boy, is it yourself? Give us your flipper, small though it be. I didn’t think I’d niver see ye agin, lad.”

“No more did I, Grampus; it was very nearly all up with us.”

“Ah! my boy,” said Bumpus, becoming suddenly very grave, “you’ve no notion how near it was all up with me. Why, you won’t believe it—I was all but scragged.”

“Dear me! what is scragged?” inquired Alice.

“You don’t mean for to say you don’t know?” exclaimed Bumpus.

“No, indeed, I don’t.”

“Why, it means bein’ hanged. I was so near hanged, just a day or two back, that I’ve had an ’orrible pain in my neck ever since at the bare thought of it! But who’s your friend?” said Bumpus, turning to the boatswain.

“Oh! I forgot him—he’s the boatswain of the Talisman. Dick Price, this is my friend, John Bumpus.”

“Glad to know you, Dick Price.”

“Same to you, and luck, John Bumpus.”

The two sea-dogs joined their enormous palms, and shook hands cordially.

After these two had indulged in a little desultory conversation, Will Corrie, who, meanwhile, consulted with Alice in an undertone, brought them back to the point that was uppermost in his mind.

“Now,” said he, “it comes to this,—we must not let Gascoyne be hanged.”

“Why, Corrie,” cried Bumpus, in surprise, “that’s the very thing I was a-thinkin’ of w’en I comed up here and found Miss Alice under the tree.”

“I am glad to hear that, Jo; it’s what has been on my own mind all the morning. But Dick Price here is not convinced that he deserves to escape. Now; you tell him all you know about Gascoyne, and I’ll tell him all I know, and if he don’t believe us, Alice and Poopy will tell him all they know, and if that won’t do, you and I will take him up by the legs and pitch him into the sea!”

“That bein’ how the case stands—fire away,” said Dick Price with a grin, sitting down on the grass and busily filling his pipe.

Dick was not so hard to be convinced as Corrie had feared. The glowing eulogiums of Bumpus, and the earnest pleadings of Alice, won him over very soon. He finally agreed to become one of the conspirators.

“But how is the thing to be done?” asked Corrie in some perplexity.