Athelstane Ford

“Then the long and short of it is that this is a pirate ship,” was all I could say.

“Well, we are, and, in a manner of speaking, we aren’t. When we want to come into Bombay here we sail under King George’s flag, and when we’re in company with the pirates we fly theirs. Any way, we’ve taken two Dutch ships and an English one since we got out here, and that’s put money in our pockets, which is more than Captain Sims would have done with his lawyering.”

“And I suppose I am to be carried to Gheriah and given up to the pirates, like Mr. Sims,” I said bitterly.

But this the boatswain swore with many oaths he would not permit. Nevertheless I could see that he was strongly attached to my cousin’s interest, and not disposed to venture anything openly against him. Indeed, he tried very hard to persuade me to come into their plans, offering to reconcile me with Rupert if I would consent to do this. To these proposals, however, I would by no means consent, being more experienced by this time than when I had joined them at Yarmouth, and having a pretty shrewd notion of how Mr. Clive would regard my former comrades if they should fall into his hands. Finally, I besought the boatswain for news of Marian.

He drew a grave face at this name.

“Athelstane, lad, I would rather you’d ask me any other question than that. Plague take the girl, she was the cause of all the mischief between you and the lieutenant! Forget her, lad, forget her, she’s not worth your troubling after.”

But he might as well have pressed me to forget who I was, and the situation into which my eagerness to hear of Marian had brought me.

Finding me resolute to know about her, he told me this much: —

“She came aboard while the Fair Maid was in the river, to nurse your cousin as he lay ill of his wounds. But I believe he had been tempting her before that to come out to the Indies with him, and she held back for him to go to church with her first, and this he didn’t care enough for her to do. Anyhow, it ended in his getting round her to trust herself with him, and he swore he would carry her straight to Calcutta and hand her over to her people there. When we got out here, and she found he had no such purpose, but meant to keep her in the fortress as long as it suited his pleasure, there was a terrible business betwixt them. But you know what the lieutenant is, and that it ain’t a few tears from a woman that’ll turn him from anything he has a mind to do. So he just set her ashore by force, and there she is, as much a prisoner as Mr. Sims himself.”

I was overcome with the horror of this news, though I suppose it was what I should have expected from my cousin’s character.

“Good heavens!” I cried out in my distraction. “Do you mean that she is in the hands of the pirates at Gheriah?”

“That’s about what it comes to. And the sooner you give up all thoughts of her the better for you, says I.”

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