The Green Flag | Page 9

be out of the usual track of commerce. And yet even in those
solitary waters he had been unable to shake off sinister traces of
Captain Sharkey.
One morning they had raised a single skiff adrift upon the face of the
ocean. Its only occupant was a delirious seaman, who yelled hoarsely
as they hoisted him aboard, and showed a dried-up tongue like a black
and wrinkled fungus at the back of his mouth. Water and nursing soon
transformed him into the strongest and smartest sailor on the ship. He
was from Marblehead, in New England, it seemed, and was the sole

survivor of a schooner which had been scuttled by the dreadful
Sharkey.
For a week Hiram Evanson, for that was his name, had been adrift
beneath a tropical sun. Sharkey had ordered the mangled remains of his
late captain to be thrown into the boat, "as provisions for the voyage,"
but the seaman had at once committed it to the deep, lest the temptation
should be more than he could bear. He had lived upon his own huge
frame until, at the last moment, the Morning Star had found him in that
madness which is the precursor of such a death. It was no bad find for
Captain Scarrow, for, with a short-handed crew, such a seaman as this
big New Englander was a prize worth having. He vowed that he was
the only man whom Captain Sharkey had ever placed under an
obligation.
Now that they lay under the guns of Basseterre, all danger from the
pirate was at an end, and yet the thought of him lay heavily upon the
seaman's mind as he watched the agent's boat shooting out from the
Custom-house quay.
"I'll lay you a wager, Morgan," said he to the first mate, "that the agent
will speak of Sharkey in the first hundred words that pass his lips."
"Well, captain, I'll have you a silver dollar, and chance it," said the
rough old Bristol man beside him.
The negro rowers shot the boat alongside, and the linen-clad steersman
sprang up the ladder. "Welcome, Captain Scarrow!" he cried. "Have
you heard about Sharkey?"
The captain grinned at the mate.
"What devilry has he been up to now?" he asked.
"Devilry! You've not heard, then? Why, we've got him safe under lock
and key at Basseterre. He was tried last Wednesday, and he is to be
hanged to-morrow morning."

Captain and mate gave a shout of joy, which an instant later was taken
up by the crew. Discipline was forgotten as they scrambled up through
the break of the poop to hear the news. The New Englander was in the
front of them with a radiant face turned up to Heaven, for he came of
the Puritan stock.
"Sharkey to be hanged!" he cried. "You don't know, Master Agent, if
they lack a hangman, do you?"
"Stand back!" cried the mate, whose outraged sense of discipline was
even stronger than his interest at the news. "I'll pay that dollar, Captain
Scarrow, with the lightest heart that ever I paid a wager yet. How came
the villain to be taken?"
"Why, as to that, he became more than his own comrades could abide,
and they took such a horror of him that they would not have him on the
ship. So they marooned him upon the Little Mangles to the south of the
Mysteriosa Bank, and there he was found by a Portobello trader, who
brought him in. There was talk of sending him to Jamaica to be tried,
but our good little Governor, Sir Charles Ewan, would not hear of it.
'He's my meat,' said he, 'and I claim the cooking of it.' If you can stay
till to-morrow morning at ten, you'll see the joint swinging."
"I wish I could," said the captain, wistfully, "but I am sadly behind time
now. I should start with the evening tide."
"That you can't do," said the agent with decision. "The Governor is
going back with you."
"The Governor!"
"Yes. He's had a dispatch from Government to return without delay.
The fly-boat that brought it has gone on to Virginia. So Sir Charles has
been waiting for you, as I told him you were due before the rains."
"Well, well!" cried the captain in some perplexity, "I'm a plain seaman,
and I don't know much of governors and baronets and their ways. I
don't remember that I ever so much as spoke to one. But if it's in King

George's service, and he asks a cast in the Morning Star as far as
London, I'll do what I can for him. There's my own cabin he can have
and welcome. As to the cooking, it's lobscouse and salmagundy six
days in the week; but he can bring his own