upon this present history; suffice it to say, that
I now learned with some astonishment that he was a born Englishman, and
that, moreover, he had begun his career in the British navy, from
which--if his story were strictly true, as I afterwards had the
opportunity of learning was the case--he had been ousted by a quite
unusual piece of tyranny, and a most singular and deplorable miscarriage
of justice. It was the latter, I gathered, even more than the former,
that had soured him, and warped everything that was good out of his
character; for it appeared that he had a keen sense of justice, and a
very exalted idea of it; he had undoubtedly been most cruelly ill-used--
he had in fact been adjudged guilty of a crime that he had never
committed--and this appeared to have utterly ruined the character of a
man who might otherwise have been an ornament to the service, distorted
all his views of right and wrong, and filled him to the brim with a
wild, unreasoning, insatiable desire for vengeance.

This much for the man's story, which, however, I soon found had been
told me with a purpose; that purpose being nothing less than the
inducing of me to join him and take the place of his lost chief mate,
whereby--according to his showing--I might speedily become a rich man.
Had the proposal come before I had heard his story I should have
resented it as an insult, but the recital to which he had treated me,
and the sentiments expressed during its narration, convinced me that his
sense of honour had been so completely warped that he could see no
disgrace in the abandonment of a service and a country capable of
treating any other man--myself, for instance, as he carefully pointed
out--as he had been treated; I therefore contented myself with a simple
refusal, coupled with an assurance that such a step would be wholly
discordant with my sense of right and wrong, utterly irreconcilable, to
my conscience, and not at all in accord with my views. I had expected
him to be furiously angry at my refusal, but to my great surprise he was
not; on the contrary, he frankly admitted that he had been fully
prepared for a refusal--at first--but that he still believed my views
might alter upon more mature reflection.

"Meanwhile," said he, "you see how I am situated; I have lost both my
officers, and have no one on board but yourself in the least capable of
taking their places. I saved your life--or spared it, which comes to
the same thing--and I now