ie, left ashore in Madagascar, they naturally
knew nothing. If they spoke truth, Captain Green certainly did not
seize the 'Speedy Return,' whatever dark and bloody deeds he may have
done off the coast of Malabar.

In England, as Secretary Johnstone, son of the caitiff Covenanter,
Waristoun, wrote to Baillie of Jerviswoode, the Whigs made party
capital out of the proceedings against Green: they said it was a
Jacobite plot. I conceive that few Scottish Whigs, to be sure, marched
under Roderick Mackenzie.

In Scotland the Privy Council refused Queen Anne's demand that the
execution of Green should be suspended till her pleasure was known,
but they did grant a week's respite. On April 10 a mob, partly from
the country, gathered in Edinburgh; the Privy Council, between the mob
and the Queen, let matters take their course. On April 11 the mob
raged round the meeting-place of the Privy Council, rooms under the
Parliament House, and chevied the Chancellor into a narrow close,
whence he was hardly rescued. However, learning that Green was to
swing after all, the mob withdrew to Leith sands, where they enjoyed
the execution of an Englishman. The whole affair hastened the Union of
1707, for it was a clear case of Union or war between the two nations.

As for Drummond, many years later, on the occasion of the Porteous
riot, Forbes of Culloden declared in the House of Commons that a few
months after Green was hanged letters came from Captain Drummond, of
the 'Speedy Return,' 'and from the very ship for whose capture the
unfortunate person suffered, informing their friends that they were
all safe.' But the 'Speedy Return' was taken by pirates, two of her
crew say, off Madagascar, and burned. What was the date of the letters
from the 'Speedy Return' to which, long afterwards, Forbes, and he
alone, referred? What was the date of the capture of the 'Speedy
Return,' at Maritan, in Madagascar? Without the dates we are no wiser.

Now comes an incidental and subsidiary mystery. In 1729 was published
_Madagascar, or Robert Drury's Journal during Fifteen Years' Captivity
on that Island, written by Himself, digested into order, and now
published at the Request of his Friends_. Drury says, as we shall see,
that he, a lad of fifteen, was prisoner in Madagascar from _about_
1703 to 1718, and that there he met Captain Drummond, late of the
'Speedy Return.' If so, Green certainly did not kill Captain Drummond.
But Drury's narrative seems to be