before the Angelus
rings," he added, consulting a large silver chronometer, "and I reckon
I kin git through my part of the job inside of twenty, leaving you ten
minutes for remarks. I want to confess."

Father Pedro drew back with a gesture of dignity. The stranger,
however, laid his hand upon the Padre's sleeve with the air of a man
anticipating objection, but never refusal, and went on.

"Of course, I know. You want me to come at some other time, and in
_there_. You want it in the reg'lar style. That's your way and your
time. My answer is: it ain't _my_ way and _my_ time. The main idea of
confession, I take it, is gettin' at the facts. I'm ready to give 'em
if you'll take 'em out here, now. If you're willing to drop the Church
and confessional, and all that sort o' thing, I, on my side, am willing
to give up the absolution, and all that sort o' thing. You might," he
added, with an unconscious touch of pathos in the suggestion, "heave in
a word or two of advice after I get through; for instance, what _you'd_
do in the circumstances, you see! That's all. But that's as you please.
It ain't part of the business."

Irreverent as this speech appeared, there was really no trace of such
intention in his manner, and his evident profound conviction that his
suggestion was practical, and not at all inconsistent with
ecclesiastical dignity, would alone have been enough to touch the
Padre, had not the stranger's dominant personality already overridden
him. He hesitated. The stranger seized the opportunity to take his arm,
and lead him with the half familiarity of powerful protection to a
bench beneath the refectory window. Taking out his watch again, he put
it in the passive hands of the astonished priest, saying, "Time me,"
cleared his throat, and began:--

"Fourteen years ago there was a ship cruisin' in the Pacific, jest off
this range, that was ez nigh on to a Hell afloat as anything rigged kin
be. If a chap managed to dodge the cap'en's belaying-pin for a time he
was bound to be fetched up in the ribs at last by the mate's boots.
There was a chap knocked down the fore hatch with a broken leg in the
Gulf, and another jumped overboard off Cape Corrientes, crazy as a
loon, along a clip of the head from the cap'en's trumpet. Them's facts.
The ship was a brigantine, trading along the Mexican coast. The cap'en
had his wife aboard, a little timid Mexican woman he'd picked up at
Mazatlan. I reckon she didn't get on with him any