ss of manner.

"You last night boasted that you could at anytime find Morillo--unless
he happened to be at sea," I said. "Now, I want to find Morillo. Tell
me where I may meet with him, and you shall receive fifty pounds within
an hour of the moment when I shall have carried his ship a prize into
Port Royal harbour."

"Morillo? who is Morillo?" he demanded, trying unsuccessfully to assume
an air of ignorance and indifference at the mention of the name.

"He is the pirate of whom you were speaking last night," I answered
sharply, for I suspected that he was about to attempt further deception
with me.

"I must have been drunk indeed to talk about a man of whom I have never
heard," he exclaimed, with a hollow pretence at a laugh.

"Do you mean to tell me that you do not know Morillo, or anything about
him?" I demanded angrily. "Now, take time to consider your answer. I
want the truth, and the truth I am determined to have by one means or
another. You have attempted to deceive me once, beware how you make
such an attempt a second time. Now, what do you know of Morillo the
pirate?"

"Nothing!" the fellow answered sullenly. But there was a shrinking of
himself together, and a sudden grey pallor of the lips, that told how
severe a tax upon his courage it was--under the circumstances--to utter
the lie.

"Think again!" I said, pulling out my watch. "I will give you five
minutes in which to overhaul your memory. If by the end of that time
you fail I must endeavour to find means to refresh it."

"What will you do?" demanded the fellow, with a scowl that entirely
failed to conceal the trepidation which my remark had caused him.

I made no reply whatever, but rose, walked to the binnacle, took a
squint at the compass, and then a long look aloft as I turned over in my
mind the idea that had suggested itself to me, asking myself whether I
should be justified in carrying it into action. I believed I now pretty
well understood the kind of man I had to deal with; I took him to be a
treacherous, unscrupulous, lying scoundrel, and a coward withal,--as
indeed such people generally are,--and it was his cowardice that I
proposed to play upon in order to extort from him the information I
desired to obtain. In a word, my plan was to seize him up and threaten
to flog him if he refused to speak. My only difficulty arose from a
doubt as to how I ought to proceed in the event of my threat failing to
effect the desired resul