He had taken a paper from his pocket.  It was a warrant with which he had provided himself, empowering him to arrest the said Henry P. Tobias, or the person passing under that name, on two counts:  First, that of seditious practices, with intent to spread treason among His Majesty’s subjects, and, second, that of wilful murder on the high seas.  I should say that, following my recital of the eventful cruise of the Maggie Darling, old Tom and I had been required to make sworn depositions of Tobias’s share in the happenings of that cruise, the murder of the captain and so forth, and I too had surrendered as evidence that eloquent manifesto which I had seen Tobias reading to the ill-fated George and “Silly” Theodore, and had afterward discussed with him.

The probabilities were that the Government would treat Tobias’s case as that of a dangerous madman, rather than as a hanging matter, but, whatever its point of view, it was clearly undesirable for such an individual to remain at large.  So the governing powers in Nassau, with whom Charlie Webster was persona grata, had been glad to take advantage of his enthusiastic patriotism and invest him with constabulary powers, hoping that he might have an opportunity of using them.  Personally, he was rather ashamed of having to employ such tame legal methods.  From his point of view, shooting at sight was all that Tobias deserved, and to give him a trial by jury was an absurdity of legal red-tape.  In this respect he agreed with the great Mr. Pickwick, that “the law is a hass.”  It was always England’s way, he said, and, if she didn’t mind, this leniency to traitors would some day be her undoing!

Charlie put the despised, yet precious, warrant back into his pocket, and gazed disgustedly across the creek, where the loveliest of young moons was rising behind a frieze of the homeless, barbaric brush.

“There was never such a place in the world,” he asserted, “to hide in—­or get lost in—­or to starve in.  I have often thought that it would make the most effective prison in the world.  Instead of spending good public money in housing and feeding scoundrels behind bars, and paying officials to keep them there, supporting expensive establishments at Dartmoor and so forth, why doesn’t the British Government export her convicts over here, land them on one of those mangrove shoals, and—­give them their freedom!  Five per cent. might succeed in escaping.  The mangrove swamps would look after the rest.”

As I have said, Charlie was a terrifying patriot.  For most offences he had the humanity of a vast forgiveness.  He was, generally speaking, the softest-hearted man I have ever met.  But for any breach of the sacred laws of England he was something like a Spanish Inquisitor.  England, in fact, was his religion.  I have heard of worse.

The young moon rose and rose, while Charlie sat in the dusk of our shanty, like a meditative mountain, saying nothing, the glowing end of his cigar occasionally hinting at the circumference of his broad Elizabethan face.