So she stared at me very hard, while I twisted my features first one way and then the other, now cocking my eye, now leering it, so that I saw she was mightily puzzled. But just then old Diggory, the thief-taker, fetched me a wipe over the chops; “Take that, you mumper,” says he, “and keep your ugly face quiet till the gentlewoman decide.” But it was no such easy matter for her to pronounce; and at length quo’ my madam, as cool as an’ she had been in a raree-show, and wished to hear the lion roar, “Make him speak, good master keeper, make him speak, and I shall know the voice.” So says old Diggory, “Come, Helter-Skelter Joe, you hear what the lady says, tip us a few tongue flourishes.” So I commenced grumbling and snorting through my nose, but it wouldn’t do. “Stow that,” says Diggory, “or we shall have the hangman in with his cat-o’-nine tails.” Then I set to gabbling in a high treble, like a dame of Billingsgate whose comrades had stolen her fish,—but it was all in vain, they made me talk in my own voice at last, and quoth the bona roba as soon as she heard the patter, “Oh, good master jailer, it is the villain, indeed.” So I was tried—condemned—left for execution, and I can tell you it took both money and friends to prevent my going up Holborn Hill in a cart.’ There were others of the crew, however, more reputable characters, so far as regarded actual roguery, but they were one and all a devil-may-care set, without thought or morals, and only anxious for plunder and debauchery. Several of them had been kidnapped, as they told me, from Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle, London, and other places. These were all of them youths under twenty, and two or three of them had been, they said, sold by their parents. They had all of them, however, managed, after serving for different periods, to make their escape from Virginia, and to find their way into the West Indian seas. They gave doleful accounts of their treatment in the plantations—how they had been flogged and starved, and of the great numbers who had died from fever and sun strokes. Those who had been kidnapped frequently fared worse than the convicted felons, because the former, being generally of tender years, were less able to protect themselves than the old thieves and vagabonds who were transported thither from the jails of England. The reader will easily understand that a great number of the crew of the ‘Saucy Susan’ were but very poor sailors, and clumsy fellows in blowing weather aloft. Indeed, it was sometimes rare sport to see the boatswain and his mates, armed with big rattans, thrashing the skulkers out of their hammocks, and chasing them up to their duty from all the secret holes and hiding-places in the ship; while Jerry would be storming and raving on the poop, and swearing that he would shoot the last man who got out on the yard in reefing topsails. Among these lubberly rogues, however, there were a handful of prime sailors, chiefly