Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/296

 keep back his laughter, for the idea of Clegg, the notorious pirate, being a country parson had of course not occurred to any one. Funny it certainly was, although there were only two to enjoy the joke—myself and my friend on the gallows. Funny the end was then; funnier the end will be now; for our good friend Captain Collyer, having come down here to discover the ringleader of the wool-running organization, brought with him a man, a murderous rascal, who was marooned upon a coral reef many years ago. I marooned that man for sedition and mutiny. He was a Cuban priest and was a dangerous practiser of black magic, and as I didn't choose to have such satan's tricks aboard my God-fearing pirate vessel, the Imogene, I left him on the reef. How the man got off the reef I know not; for it was a thing impossible to do. But get off he did, and it must have been by some hell's trick that he managed it. To get him caught I forced Rash, our esteemed schoolmaster, whom you all admire for his great work among the smugglers here, to commit murder upon Sennacherib Pepper, who was seeing more upon the Marsh than was altogether healthy for him; but when my faithful murderer began thinking of King's evidence, I had to see that he was removed by the Marsh witches and done to death. I like you to know all this, because I am something of a vain fellow, and I never can abide people having the laugh on me, and so, my dear friend Captain Collyer, oblige me like a