an' the damn noise drowns our
voices. What'd yer have in your mind, mate?"

"Only this, Watkins. I've got to do something, and believe I can trust
you. You are a square English seaman, probably the only one aboard I
can repose confidence in. I don't blame you for sticking, for I
suppose likely I'd do the same if I was in your case. But I
ain't--it's not my life I'm thinking about, but that of a woman."

He stared at me across the narrow space separating our bunks, the
shadows from the swinging lantern giving his features a strange
expression.

"A woman! Hell, lad; not the one brought aboard last night?"

"Exactly; now listen--I'm going to tell you my story, and ask your
help. Do you know what Estada went after in the long-boat?"

"Well, there's been plenty o' talk. The cook brought us some stories
he heard aft, an' we knew we wus driftin' along the coast, waitin' fer
Sanchez ter cum back. I suppose he'd got onto some English gold--in
that chest they slung aboard, wasn't it?"

"Yes; that was the main object. My name is not Gates, at all, and I am
not the man Mendez brought aboard drunk, and who was thrown over the
rail by LeVere. That fellow was drowned."

"Well, by God!"

"I am Geoffry Carlyle, an English skipper. There has been a revolution
in England, in which I became involved. When the attempt failed, I was
taken prisoner and deported to America for twenty years servitude. I
came over with a bunch of others on the same ship with Sanchez."

"The _Romping Betsy_?"

"Yes. There was a rich planter, and his niece also aboard. He was
coming home with a chest of money--fifty thousand pounds--realized
from a big sale of tobacco in London, and the young woman was
returning from attending school in England. Sanchez was aboard to gain
possession of both."

Watkins nodded, too deeply interested in the narrative to interrupt.

"He pretended to be of the Spanish nobility, an ex-naval officer, and
tried all the way over to make love to this Dorothy Fairfax. He got
along all right with the uncle, and was invited to visit him, but the
girl was not so easy. He must have had it all planned out how he was
to get the gold, Fairfax carried--that was what the _Namur_ was
waiting for--and when he found that the young woman could not be won
by fair means, he decided to take her by force."

"It's not the first time for the black-hearted devil. But how did you
happen to come along?"

"Fairfax bought me to run his sloop. Perh