“I had heard also that you had been plagued by a quartan ague.”

“Yes; I have had a pyrexy, which has reduced me much.”

“We had set aside a cabin for your surgeon.”

“Ah, the rascal!  There was no budging him, for he has a snug business amongst the merchants.  But hark!” He raised his ring-covered band in the air.  From far astern there came the low, deep thunder of cannon.

“It is from the island!” cried the captain in astonishment.  “Can it be a signal for us to put back?”

The Governor laughed.  “You have heard that Sharkey, the pirate, is to be hanged this morning.  I ordered the batteries to salute when the rascal was kicking his last, so that I might know of it out at sea.  There’s an end of Sharkey!”

“There’s an end of Sharkey!” cried the captain; and the crew took up the cry as they gathered in little knots upon the deck and stared back at the low, purple line of the vanishing land.

It was a cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge and so escaped.  At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and Governor smoked their long pipes, and drank their claret as three good comrades should.

“And what figure did Sharkey cut in the dock?” asked the captain.

“He is a man of some presence,” said the Governor.

“I had always understood that he was an ugly, sneering devil,” remarked the mate.

“Well, I dare say he could look ugly upon occasions,” said the Governor.

“I have heard a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his eyes,” said Captain Scarrow.  “They were of the lightest filmy blue, with red-rimmed lids.  Was that not so, Sir Charles?”

“Alas, my own eyes will not permit me to know much of those of others!  But I remember now that the adjutant-general said that he had such an eye as you describe, and added that the jury was so foolish as to be visibly discomposed when it was turned upon them.  It is well for them that he is dead, for he was a man who would never forget an injury, and if he had laid hands upon any one of them he would have stuffed him with straw and hung him for a figure-head.”

The idea seemed to amuse the Governor, for he broke suddenly into a high, neighing laugh, and the two seamen laughed also, but not so heartily, for they remembered that Sharkey was not the last pirate who sailed the western seas, and that as grotesque a fate might come to be their own.  Another bottle was broached to drink to a pleasant voyage, and the Governor would drink just one other on the top of it, so that the seamen were glad at last to stagger off—­the one to his watch, and the other to his bunk.  But when, after his four hours’ spell, the mate came down again, he was amazed to see the Governor, in his Ramillies wig, his glasses, and his powdering-gown, still seated sedately at the lonely table with his reeking pipe and six black bottles by his side.