louder, less from fear than from the knowledge that his
abjectness would please the captain's vanity and induce him to let up
sooner.

"Now _you_ come here!" Schantze beckoned me.

He raised the cane at me. But, to my own surprise, something brave and
strange entered into me. I would not be humiliated before a countryman
of my mother's, that was what it was!

I looked the captain straight in the eye.

"Sir, I did not do it, and I won't be whipped!"

"Wha-at!" ejaculated Schantze, astonished at my novel behaviour.

"I didn't touch the syrup." Karl looked at me, astonished and
incredulous at my audacity, through his tear-stained face.

The captain stepped back from me.

I must be telling the truth to be behaving so differently.

"Get to your bunk then!" he commanded.

I obeyed.

"Who is he?" ... I heard the little customs man ask the skipper; "he
doesn't talk like an Englishman."

"He isn't. He just a damn-fool Yankee boy I picked up in New York."

* * * * *

They had rounded Franz up and locked him away. The captain was
determined to frustrate his little scheme for reimbursement, which he
had by this time guessed.

I lie. I must tell the truth in these memoirs.

I had told on him.

But my motive was only an itch to see what would then take place. But
when I saw that the issue would be an obvious one: that he would merely
be spirited forth to sea again, and this time, _forced_ to work, I felt
a little sorry for the man. At the same time, I admit I wanted to
observe the denouement myself, of his case ... and as I now intended to
desert the ship, it would have to take place in Sydney.

So, on the second night of Franz's incarceration, when nearly everybody
was away on shore-leave, I took the captain's bunch of keys, and I let
the shanghaied man, the mutineer, the man from Alsace-Lorraine--out!

It was not a very dark night. Franz stole along like a rat till he
reached the centre of the dock. There he gave a great shout of defiance
... why, I learned later....

The _Lord Summerville_, which had, after all, beat us in by two days,
despite Captain Schantze's boast, was lying on the other side of our
dock. And her mate and several sailors thus became witnesses of what
happened.

The shout brought, of course, our few men who remained on watch, on
deck, and over on the dock after Franz ... who allowed himself to be
caught ... the dock was English ground ... the ship was Ge