The Ruby of Kishmoor | Page 5

of the East.
But, upon coming to a division of their booty, it was presently
discovered that the Rajah's ruby had mysteriously disappeared from the
collection of jewels to be divided. The other pirates immediately
suspected their captain of having secretly purloined it, and, indeed, so
certain were they of his turpitude that they immediately set about
taking means to force a confession from him.
In this, however, they were so far unsuccessful that the captain,
refusing to yield to their importunities, had suffered himself to die
under their hands, and had so carried the secret of the hiding-place of
the great ruby--if he possessed such a secret--along with him.
Duckworthy concluded his confession by declaring that in his opinion
he himself, the Portuguese sailing-master, the captain of The Bloody
Hand, and Hunt were the only ones of Captain Keitt's crew who were
now alive; for that The Good Fortune must have broken up in a storm,
which immediately followed their desertion of her; in which event the
entire crew must inevitably have perished.
It may be added that Duckworthy himself was shortly hanged, so that,
if his surmise was true, there was now only three left alive of all that
wicked crew that had successfully carried to its completion the greatest
adventure which any pirate in the world had ever, perhaps, embarked
upon.

I. Jonathan Rugg

You may never know what romantic aspirations may lie hidden beneath
the most sedate and sober demeanor.
To have observed Jonathan Rugg, who was a tall, lean, loose-jointed

young Quaker of a somewhat forbidding aspect, with straight, dark hair
and a bony, overhanging forehead set into a frown, a pair of small,
deep-set eyes, and a square jaw, no one would for a moment have
suspected that he concealed beneath so serious an exterior any appetite
for romantic adventure.
Nevertheless, finding himself suddenly transported, as it were, from the
quiet of so sober a town as that of Philadelphia to the tropical
enchantment of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, the night brilliant
with a full moon that swung in an opal sky, the warm and luminous
darkness replete with the mysteries of a tropical night, and burdened
with the odors of a land breeze, he suddenly discovered himself to be
overtaken with so vehement a desire for some unwonted excitement
that, had the opportunity presented itself, he felt himself ready to
embrace any adventure with the utmost eagerness, no matter whither it
would have conducted him.
At home (where he was a clerk in the counting-house of a leading
merchant, by name Jeremiah Doolittle), should such idle fancies have
come to him, he would have looked upon himself as little better than a
fool, but now that he found himself for the first time in a foreign
country, surrounded by such strange and unusual sights and sounds, all
conducive to extravagant imaginations, the wish for some extraordinary
and altogether unusual experience took possession of him with a
singular vehemence to which he had heretofore been altogether a
stranger.
In the street where he stood, which was of a shining whiteness and
which reflected the effulgence of the moonlight with an incredible
distinction, he observed, stretching before him, long lines of white
garden walls, overtopped by a prodigious luxuriance of tropical foliage.
In these gardens, and set close to the street, stood several pretentious
villas and mansions, the slatted blinds and curtains of the windows of
which were raised to admit of the freer entrance of the cool and balmy
air of the night. From within there issued forth bright lights, together
with the exhilarating sound of merry voices laughing and talking, or
perhaps a song accompanied by the tinkling music of a spinet or of a

guitar. An occasional group of figures, clad in light and summer-like
garments, and adorned with gay and startling colors, passed him
through the moonlight; so that what with the brightness and warmth of
the night, together with all these unusual sights and sounds, it appeared
to Jonathan Rugg that he was rather the inhabitant of some
extraordinary land of enchantment and unreality than a dweller upon
that sober and solid world in which he had heretofore passed his entire
existence.
Before continuing this narrative the reader may here be informed that
our hero had come into this enchanted world as the supercargo of the
ship SUSANNA HAYES, of Philadelphia; that he had for several years
proved himself so honest and industrious a servant to the merchant
house of the worthy Jeremiah Doolittle that that benevolent man had
given to his well-deserving clerk this opportunity at once of gratifying
an inclination for foreign travel and of filling a position of trust that
should redound to his individual profit. The SUSANNA HAYES had
entered Kingston Harbor that afternoon,