r, and who lay without life or motion, as though neither were
of more account than so much old junk. After that they shoved off from
the beach in the direction of my old craft the _Cassandra_, which rode
at anchor about a mile and a half or two miles away.

The boat had hardly come alongside when the news of my coming ran fore
and aft like a train of powder. They hoisted me upon deck and laid me
just aft of the main-mast, whilst a great crowd gathered round me and
stared at me, some of them grinning and some of them cursing me.

Most of them were more or less in liquor, and it was this circumstance
that came nigh to costing me my life, and this was how it happened:

One great fellow with a dreadful scar across his face gave me a kick in
the loins which I thought at first had finished me, and for no cause
that I could see but that he was drunk and in a savage humor. One or two
of them sang out to him not to kill me just then, but he made no answer
except by aiming another kick at my head, which I warded off with my
arm so that it did me little or no harm. He drew back his foot for
another blow, but just then an iron belaying-pin came whizzing through
the air and struck the fellow in the jaw, knocking him down upon the
deck as though he had been shot.

I turned mine eyes and saw that it was Captain England himself who had
struck the blow.

"Look 'ee," says he, "we'll have none of this; if killing is to be done,
it is to be done lawyer-like. He's come aboard himself, and if he's to
be killed he's to be killed after his trial, and not before."

There was a moment or two of pause, for Captain England had drawn a
brace of pistols, and held one cocked in either hand; but just then up
stepped a fellow who it was very plain to see was of some account
amongst them, for his clothes were of rich stuff, and he had a gold
chain with a cross slung around his neck, and golden ear-rings in his
ears. He walked up to England until he stood face to face with him.

"Look 'ee, Ned England," says he, "what I've got to say is this: you're
carrying things with too high a hand to suit us easy-going fellows. D'ye
think you're king or emperor, and that we're nigger slaves, that you
knock us about as it suits your humor?"

I had expected that England would have shot the fellow down where he
stood, but he stayed his hand, and by the muttering of the rest I knew
that the speaker carried most of them with him.

"Look 'ee, now," says he, more