Masters, who looked scared; and, though angry and
highly incensed with us at first, was only too glad at its being but a
joke, and not a fact that he was dead, to bear us any ill-feeling long.

We were horrified when we were told later on, while we were committing
to the deep the corpses of those slain--negroes and white men
impartially sharing the same grave beneath the placid sea, at rest like
themselves, the breeze having died away again soon after sunset--that
Etienne Brago and Francois Terne, the two wounded sailors we had left
below with the Boissons, and little Mr Johnson and the colonel and
Elsie of course, that _these_ were the only ones left of the thirty odd
souls on board the _Saint Pierre_ when she sailed from La Guayra a
fortnight before!

After all the bodies had been buried in their watery tomb, not
forgetting that of poor Ivan, who we all thought merited an honoured
place by the side of his biped brethren of valour--well, after all this
had been done the skipper had the pumps rigged and the decks sluiced
down to wash away all traces of the fray.

A council of war was then held between us all on the poop, the skipper
of course presiding, and the colonel coming up from the cabin to take
part in the proceedings, as well as old Mr Stokes from our ship, where
he had remained attending singlehanded to the duties of the engine-room,
denying himself, as Garry O'Neil remarked, "all the foin of the
foighting!"

This conclave had been called for the purpose of deciding what was to be
done with the _Saint Pierre_ and the captured black pirates, from whom
we had salvaged her, and without much deliberation it was pretty soon
decided, on the colonel's suggestion, to send the ship to her destined
port, Liverpool, taking the negroes in her, so that they could be tried
before a proper court in England for the offence they had committed.
"It's of no use your fetching them up to New York," said the colonel,
"for though I'm an American myself and am proud of my nationality, I
must confess those Yanks of the north mix up dollars and justice in a
way that puzzles folk that are not accustomed to their way of holding
the scales."

The skipper was of the same opinion as Colonel Vereker; so, the matter
having been settled, a navigating party was selected to work the _Saint
Pierre_ across the Atlantic, with Garry O'Neil as chief officer. The
skipper was unable to spare Mr Fosset, and Garry was all the more fit
in every way