He stared at me across the narrow space separating our bunks, the shadows from the swinging lantern giving his features a strange expression.

“A woman!  Hell, lad; not the one brought aboard last night?”

“Exactly; now listen—­I’m going to tell you my story, and ask your help.  Do you know what Estada went after in the long-boat?”

“Well, there’s been plenty o’ talk.  The cook brought us some stories he heard aft, an’ we knew we wus driftin’ along the coast, waitin’ fer Sanchez ter cum back.  I suppose he’d got onto some English gold—­in that chest they slung aboard, wasn’t it?”

“Yes; that was the main object.  My name is not Gates, at all, and I am not the man Mendez brought aboard drunk, and who was thrown over the rail by LeVere.  That fellow was drowned.”

“Well, by God!”

“I am Geoffry Carlyle, an English skipper.  There has been a revolution in England, in which I became involved.  When the attempt failed, I was taken prisoner and deported to America for twenty years servitude.  I came over with a bunch of others on the same ship with Sanchez.”

“The Romping Betsy?”

“Yes.  There was a rich planter, and his niece also aboard.  He was coming home with a chest of money—­fifty thousand pounds—­realized from a big sale of tobacco in London, and the young woman was returning from attending school in England.  Sanchez was aboard to gain possession of both.”

Watkins nodded, too deeply interested in the narrative to interrupt.

“He pretended to be of the Spanish nobility, an ex-naval officer, and tried all the way over to make love to this Dorothy Fairfax.  He got along all right with the uncle, and was invited to visit him, but the girl was not so easy.  He must have had it all planned out how he was to get the gold, Fairfax carried—­that was what the Namur was waiting for—­and when he found that the young woman could not be won by fair means, he decided to take her by force.”

“It’s not the first time for the black-hearted devil.  But how did you happen to come along?”

“Fairfax bought me to run his sloop.  Perhaps it was the girl who won him over.  Anyhow this arrangement angered Sanchez, and we had words.  You know the rest, or, at least, the main facts.  Sanchez and the boat crew held rendezvous at the first landing up the Bay.  It was prearranged, but it was my fortune to meet the Captain alone on shore in the dark, where we fought.”

“It was you then who drove the knife in?  God!” excitedly, “but I would give ten years for such a chance.  Ay, and, they say, you came within an eighth of an inch of sending him to hell.”

“I knew not where I struck; ’twas a death struggle in the dark.  I thought him dead when I left him, and ran to warn the others.  But for this I was too late.  The moment I set foot on the sloop’s deck it was to close in battle with the big negro.”