Whereupon I launched out into the story of our escape, made them laugh heartily by my description of our dealings with the French captain, and so brought them, as I thought, to a more reasonable temper.

“And now, seeing that we’re in a manner shipmates, you won’t refuse to answer a simple question, I’m sure,” I said.  “What house is this?”

“No harm in that, Bill,” says Jack. “’Tis the house of the second overseer of this ’ere plantation, and much good may it do you to know it.”

Having thus broken the ice, I succeeded, before I had finished my meal, in drawing sundry other information out of them.  I learned that the place of my imprisonment was some two miles from Mistress Lucy’s house, being situate at the extreme verge of the sugar plantation.  The men knew nothing about Mistress Lucy, or of what went on at the house, having recently been brought up by Vetch, along with a dozen or more shipmates, from a brig belonging to their employer that now lay in a cove on the north of the island some ten miles away.  They made no bones about acknowledging that they had formed part of the crew of a buccaneer vessel and had been hired by Vetch for a month’s service on shore, which suited them very well, since they had nothing to do, good pay, and were given a liberal allowance of bumbo, which was, I discovered, a concoction of rum and water, sugar and nutmeg.

“Well, now,” says I, thinking the time had come for my proposal, “I don’t ask you what pay you are getting, but whatever it is, I will double it if you’ll let me loose, and help me to get down to Spanish Town.”

“Come up, now!” says Bill, “d’ye think to gammon us?  We know what a lieutenant’s wages is, we do, and ’twould take a dozen of you together to pay us enough for that there job.”

“And you shall have it,” I said.

“Ay, and a dose of irons into the bargain,” said the man.  “No, no; we don’t want no lobsters up from Spanish Town; not if we know it.

“Besides, we knows what king’s officers be, don’t we, Jack?

“We’ve bin on king’s ships, Lord love you, and we knows where the pay goes to.  Once you get to Spanish Town you’d forget all about us; we’ve bin done like that afore.”

And then what must I do but produce a handful of silver and show it them as earnest of my promise.  I could not have done a stupider thing.  At the sight of the money the men fell upon me, and emptied my pocket (despite my resistance) of every stiver it contained; so that I was now, as once before in my life, bare of everything save my clothes and Cludde’s crown piece, which was hidden under my shirt.  Then, with many a chuckle, the scoundrels left me, to meditate on the exceeding folly of trying to make terms with buccaneers.

So three days passed.  I was never allowed to quit my room; Jack and Bill guarded it by day, two other men by night.  I became more and more miserable and anxious.  I could get no news from my jailers, nor did I ever see the overseer in whose house I was; and I suffered from a constant dread that Vetch’s plans, whatever they were, were maturing, and that it would soon be too late for any intervention.