Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/64

. "He might well be deaf, too, for his ears are also gone, probably along with his tongue, but he's not deaf, he understands the bo'sun all right."

"Did you ever find out how he lost them?" asked the squire.

"It was Clegg," replied the captain; "for after having been tortured in this pleasant fashion he was marooned upon a coral reef."

"Good God!" said the vicar, going pale with the thought of it.

"How did he get off?" asked the squire.

"God alone knows," returned the captain.

"Can't you get it out of him in some way?" said the squire.

"Job Mallet, the bo'sun, can't make him understand some things," said the captain, "but he located the reef upon which he'd been marooned in the Admiralty chart, and it's as God-forsaken a piece of rock as you could wish. No vegetation; far from the beat of ships; not even registered upon the mercantile maps. As well be the man in the moon as a man on that reef for all the chance you'd have to get off."

"But he got off," said the squire. "How?"

"That's just it," said the captain, "how? If you can find that out you're smarter than Job Mallet, who seems the only man who can get things out of him."

"By Gad! I'm quite eager to look at the poor devil!" cried the squire.