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290 had resulted as I had hoped, that they would have pocketed their share of the spoils, and betrayed no scruples, I knew them too well to doubt. But because, as I held, through no fault of mine, the affair had miscarried, there was no epithet too opprobrious for them to bestow on me. By their showing I had been guilty of all sorts of crimes of which I had never heard. I had betrayed their trust; smirched their good name—as if in the eyes of those who knew them it could be smirched; been guilty of piracy; acted like a common thief; offended against the law of nations; brought shame on England’s mercantile marine.

Oh, it was grand to hear them talking! They might have been saints from whose brows I had plucked the halos. They were good enough to explain that it was only because they disbelieved my entire story, and placed no credence in any part of it whatever, that they refrained from handing me over to the properly constituted authorities, to be by them passed on to the Chinese Government, to be dealt with as my offences merited. They took me for a jay. And were so kind as to add that they looked upon the tale as a clumsy, dishonest, and disingenuous attempt to draw a red herring across their track—the phrase was theirs!—and so prevented them from taking proper and adequate notice of the scandalous neglect of duty, and of their interests, of which, to my lasting shame, I had been guilty.

It was a rare wigging that I had. And, to the best of their ability, they included in it everyone who had been with me on board The Flying Scud. There were four of us, at least, who swore that we’d be even for it with someone somehow. Isaac Rudd, Sam Holley, his chum, Bill Cox, and I; we were the four.

And all we had to go upon, to help us towards getting even, was a scrap of paper. Half a sheet of common note.