Gordon will be to the French.' Mackenzie asking Haines if
he had ever heard of the 'Speedy Return,' the missing ship, Haines
replied: 'You need not trouble your head about her, for I believe you
won't see her in haste.' He thought that Captain Drummond had turned
pirate.

Haines now fell in love with a girl at Bruntisland, aged nineteen,
named Anne Seaton, and told her a number of things, which she promised
to repeat to Mackenzie, but disappointed him, though she had blabbed
to others. It came to be reported that Captain Green had pirated the
'Speedy Return,' and murdered Captain Drummond and his crew. The Privy
Council, in January 1705, took the matter up. A seal, or forged copy
of the seal, of the Scottish African and East India Company was found
on board the 'Worcester,' and her captain and crew were judicially
interrogated, after the manner of the French _Juge d'Instruction_.

On March 5, 1705, the Scottish Court of Admiralty began the trial of
Green and his men. Charles May, surgeon of the 'Worcester,' and two
negroes, Antonio Ferdinando, cook's mate, and Antonio Francisco,
captain's man, were ready to give evidence against their comrades.
They were accused of attacking, between February and May, 1703, off
the coast of Malabar a vessel bearing a red flag, and having English
or Scots aboard. They pursued her in their sloop, seized and killed
the crew, and stole the goods.

Everyone in Scotland, except resolute Whigs, believed the vessel
attacked to have been Captain Drummond's 'Speedy Return.' But there
was nothing definite to prove the fact; there was no _corpus delicti_.
In fact the case was parallel to that of the Campden mystery, in which
three people were hanged for killing old Mr. Harrison, who later
turned up in perfect health. In Green's, as in the Campden case, some
of the accused confessed their guilt, and yet evidence later obtained
tends to prove that Captain Drummond and his ship and crew were all
quite safe at the date of the alleged piracy by Captain Green. None
the less, it does appear that Captain Green had been pirating
somebody, and perhaps he was 'none the waur o' a hanging,' though, as
he had an English commission to act against pirates, it was argued
that, if he had been fighting at all, it was against pirates that he
had been making war. Now Haines's remark that Captain Drummond, as he
heard, had turned pirate, looks very like a 'hedge' to be used in case
the 'Worcester' was proved to have