‘Here! Come and take this wheel while I have a spell!’ grunted the captain. ‘I couldn’t well say _how_ long back,’ continued the mate in a loud, unnatural, and now slightly exultant voice: ‘forty years or more.’ He began to tell the story of the famous Rector of Roseau: one of the finest pathetic preachers of his age, according to contemporaries; whose appearance was fine, gentle, and venerable, and who supplemented his stipend by owning a small privateer. ‘Here! Otto!’ called Jonsen. But the mate had a long recital of the parson’s misfortunes before him: beginning with the capture of his schooner (while smuggling negroes to Guadaloupe) by another privateer, from Nevis; and how the parson went to Nevis, posted his rival’s name on the court-house door, and stood on guard there with loaded pistols for three days in the hope the man would come and challenge him. ‘What, to fight a _duel_?’ asked Harry. ‘But wasn’t he a clergyman, you said?’ asked Emily. But duels, it appeared, did not come amiss to this priest. He fought thirteen altogether in his life, the mate told them: and on one occasion, while waiting for the seconds to reload, he went up to his opponent, suggested ‘just a little something to fill in time, good sir’--and knocked him flat with his fist. This time, however, his enemy lay low: so he fitted out a second schooner, and took command of her, week-days, himself. His first quarry was an apparently harmless Spanish merchantman: but she suddenly opened fourteen masked gun-ports and it was he who had to surrender. All his crew were massacred but himself and his carpenter, who hid behind a water-cask all night. ‘But I don’t understand,’ said Margaret: ‘was he a pirate?’ ‘Of course he was!’ said Otto the mate. ‘Then _why_ did you say he was a clergyman?’ pursued Emily. The mate looked as puzzled as she did. ‘Well, he was Rector of Roseau, wasn’t he? And B.A., B.D.? Anyway, he was Rector until the new Governor listened to some cock-and-bull story against him, and made him resign. He was the best preacher they ever had--he’d have been a Bishop one day, if some one hadn’t slandered him to the Governor!’ ‘Otto!’ called the captain in a conciliatory voice. ‘Come over here, I want to speak to you.’