ind an oaken table
covered with greasy charts and spilled liquor and tobacco.

"So ho, you are risen from the dead, are you, my fine buck? Mr.
What-do-they-call-you?" cried the captain, with a word as foul as any
he had yet uttered. "By the Lord, you shall pay for running my bosun
through!"

"And by the Lord, Captain What's-your-name," I cried back, for the rum I
had taken had heated me, "you and your fellow-rascals shall pay in blood
for this villanous injury!"

Griggs got to his feet and seized his hanger, his face like livid marble
seamed with blue. And from force of habit I made motion for my sword,
to make the shameful discovery that I was clothed from head to foot in
linsey-woolsey.

"G-d---my soul," he roared, "if I don't slit you like a herring! The
devil burn me to a cinder if I don't give your guts to the sharks!" And
he made at me in such a fury that I would certainly have been cut to
pieces had I not grasped a cutlass and parried his blow, Cockle looking
on with his jaw dropped like a peak without haulyards. With a stroke of
my weapon I disarmed Captain Griggs, his sword flying through the cabin
window. For I made up my mind I would better die fighting than expire at
a hideous torture, which I doubted not he would inflict, and so I took
up a posture of defence, with one eye on the mate; despite the kind
offices of the latter below I knew not whether he were disposed to
befriend me before the captain. What was my astonishment, therefore, to
behold Griggs's truculent manner change.

"Avast, my man-o-war," he cried; "blood and wounds! I had more than an
eye when they brought thee aboard, else I would have killed thee like
a sucking-pig under the forecastle, as I have given oath to do. By the
Ghost, you are worth seven of that Roger Spratt whom you sent to hell in
his boots."

Wherewith Cockle, who for all his terrible appearance stood in a mighty
awe of his captain, set up a loud laugh, and vowed that Griggs knew a
man when he spared me, and was cursed for his pains.

"So you were contracted to murder me, Captain Griggs?" said I.

"Ay," he replied, a devilish gleam coming into his eye, "but I have now
got you and the money to boot. But harkye, I'll stand by my half of the
bargain, by G--. If ever you reach Maryland alive, they may hang me to
the yardarm of a ship-of-the-line."

And I live long enough, my dears, I hope some day to write for you the
account of all that befell me on this slaver, Black M