slowly above the violet water-line.  Sometimes it was from a coaster, which had found a waterless Bahama cay littered with sun-dried bodies.  Once there came a man who had been mate of a Guineaman, and who had escaped from the pirate’s hands.  He could not speak—­for reasons which Sharkey could best supply—­but he could write, and he did write, to the very great interest of Copley Banks.  For hours they sat together over the map, and the dumb man pointed here and there to outlying reefs and tortuous inlets, while his companion sat smoking in silence, with his unvarying face and his fiery eyes.

One morning, some two years after his misfortunes, Mr. Copley Banks strode into his own office with his old air of energy and alertness.  The manager stared at him in surprise, for it was months since he had shown any interest in business.

“Good morning, Mr. Banks!” said he.

“Good morning, Freeman.  I see that Ruffling Harry is in the Bay.”

“Yes, sir; she clears for the Windward Islands on Wednesday.”

“I have other plans for her, Freeman.  I have determined upon a slaving venture to Whydah.”

“But her cargo is ready, sir.”

“Then it must come out again, Freeman.  My mind is made up, and the Ruffling Harry must go slaving to Whydah.”

All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to clear the ship once more.  And then Copley Banks began to make preparations for his African voyage.  It appeared that he relied upon force rather than barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried none of those showy trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted with eight nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses.  The after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder magazine, and she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer.  Water and provisions were shipped for a long voyage.

But the preparation of his ship’s company was most surprising.  It made Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that his master had taken leave of his senses.  For, under one pretext or another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port—­men whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to furnish them.  There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from that great crime.  He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking of Cape Coast Castle.

The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk.  His beard had been shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his experiences to Copley Banks.  These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet uncommented upon in the town of Kingston.  The Commandant of the troops—­Major Harvey of the Artillery—­made serious representations to the Governor.