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 better than the men, for she ups and dies one day, leavin’ her baby, a year-old gal.  One of the crew was fond o’ that baby.  He used to get the black nurse to put it in the dingy, and he’d tow it astern, rocking it with the painter like a cradle.  He did it—­hatin’ the cap’en all the same.  One day the black nurse got out of the dingy for a moment, when the baby was asleep, leavin’ him alone with it.  An idea took hold on him, jest from cussedness, you’d say, but it was partly from revenge on the cap’en and partly to get away from the ship.  The ship was well inshore, and the current settin’ towards it.  He slipped the painter—­that man—­and set himself adrift with the baby.  It was a crazy act, you’d reckon, for there wasn’t any oars in the boat; but he had a crazy man’s luck, and he contrived, by sculling the boat with one of the seats he tore out, to keep her out of the breakers, till he could find a bight in the shore to run her in.  The alarm was given from the ship, but the fog shut down upon him; he could hear the other boats in pursuit.  They seemed to close in on him, and by the sound he judged the cap’en was just abreast of him in the gig, bearing down upon him in the fog.  He slipped out of the dingy into the water without a splash, and struck out for the breakers.  He got ashore after havin’ been knocked down and dragged in four times by the undertow.  He had only one idea then, thankfulness that he had not taken the baby with him in the surf.  You kin put that down for him:  it’s a fact.  He got off into the hills, and made his way up to Monterey.”

“And the child?” asked the Padre, with a sudden and strange asperity that boded no good to the penitent; “the child thus ruthlessly abandoned—­what became of it?”

“That’s just it, the child,” assented the stranger, gravely.  “Well, if that man was on his death-bed instead of being here talking to you, he’d swear that he thought the cap’en was sure to come up to it the next minit.  That’s a fact.  But it wasn’t until one day that he—­that’s me—­ran across one of that crew in Frisco.  ‘Hallo, Cranch,’ sez he to me, ’so you got away, didn’t you?  And how’s the cap’en’s baby?  Grown a young gal by this time, ain’t she?’ ‘What are you talkin about,’ ez I; ‘how should I know?’ He draws away from me, and sez, ‘D—–­ it,’ sez he, ‘you don’t mean that you’ . . .  I grabs him by the throat and makes him tell me all.  And then it appears that the boat and the baby were never found again, and every man of that crew, cap’en and all, believed I had stolen it.”

He paused.  Father Pedro was staring at the prospect with an uncompromising rigidity of head and shoulder.

“It’s a bad lookout for me, ain’t it?” the stranger continued, in serious reflection.