know of me from the admiral and Captain Ivy, who told
him all my story since I was freed from jail. Then he said I should
be confined in a narrow space near to Kingston, and should have no
freedom; but the admiral had his way, and I was given freedom of the
whole island till word should come from the Admiralty what should be
done with me. To the governor's mind it was dangerous allowing me
freedom, a man convicted of crime, who had been imprisoned, had been
a mutineer, had stolen one of his majesty's ships, and had fled to
the Caribbean Sea. He thought I should well be at the bottom of the
ocean, where he would soon have put me, I make no doubt, if it had
not been for the admiral, and Captain Ivy--you do not know him, I
think--who played a good part to me, when men once close friends
have deserted me.

Well, we had, Michael and I, but twenty pounds between us; and if
there was not plenty of free food in the island, God knows what
would have become of us! But there it was, fresh in every field, by
every wayside, at every doorway. We could not starve, or die of
thirst, or faint for lack of sleep, since every bush was a bed in
spite of the garapatos or wood-ticks, the snore of the tree-toad,
the hoarse shriek of the macaw, and the shrill gird of the guinea-
fowl. Every bed was thus free, and there was land to be got for a
song, enough to grow what would suffice for two men's daily wants.
But we did not rest long upon the land--I have it still, land which
cost me five pounds out of the twenty, and for the rest there was an
old but on the little place--five acres it was, and good land too,
where you could grow anything at all. Heaven knows what we might
have become in that tiny plantation, for I was sick of life, and the
mosquitos and flying ants, and the chattering parroquets, the grim
gallinazo, and the quatre, or native bed--a wooden frame and canvas;
but one day at Kingston I met a man, one Cassandro Biatt, who had an
obsession for adventure, and he spoke to me privately. He said he
knew me from people's talk, and would I listen to him? What was
there to do? He was a clean-cut rogue, if ever there was one, but
a rogue of parts, as he proved; and I lent an ear.

Now, what think you was his story? Well, but this--that off the
coast of Haiti, there was a ship which had been sunk with every man
on board, and with the