Martin Conisby

"The noose--here, Diccon, here, yes!"

As one in a dream I felt the rope lifted from me and saw it set about the neck of Job.

"So! Ready there? Now--heave all!"

I heard the creak of the block, the quick tramp of feet, a strangling cry, and Job the quartermaster was snatched aloft to kick and writhe and dangle against the moon.

"Diccon, we have lost our quartermaster and we sail on the flood; you are quartermaster henceforth, yes. Ha--look--see, my Englishman is sick! Dowse a bucket o' water over him, then let him be ironed and take him forward to the fo'castle; he shall serve you all for sport--but no killing, mind." Thus lay I to be kicked and buffeted and half-drowned; yet when they had shackled me, cometh the man Diccon to clap me heartily on the shoulder and after him Resolution to nod at me and blink with his single, twinkling eye: "Oh, friend," quoth he, "Oh, brother, saw ye ever the like of our Captain Jo? Had Davy been here to-day he might perchance ha' wrote a psalm to her."

That morning with the flood tide we hove anchor and the Happy Despatch stood out to sea and, as she heeled to the freshening wind, Job's stiffening body lurched and swayed and twisted from the main yard. And thus it was I saw the last of my island.