I found afterwards that the noise did proceed only from monkeys, though
I did not suppose that such small animals could have made such hideous
sounds. To go to sleep again, however, I found was impossible, as I had
already enjoyed much more than I usually got on a stretch. The captain,
on the contrary, went off again directly; but his sleep was much
disturbed, for he tumbled about and spoke so loudly, that at times I
thought he was awake and calling me. "You'll make me, will you?" I
heard him say. "I don't fear you, Captain Ralph. I--a pirate--so I
might have been called--I was but a lad--I consented to no deed of
blood--It cannot be brought against me--Well, I know--I know--I
acknowledge my debt to you.--You exact it to the uttermost--I'll obey
you--The merchants deem me an honest trader--What would they say if they
heard me called pirate?--Ha, ha, ha?" He laughed long and bitterly.
I was very glad that no one else was in the room to hear what the
captain was saying. A stranger would certainly have thought much worse
of him than he deserved. I had now been so long with him that I was
confident, whatever he might have done in his youth, that he was now an
honest and well-intentioned man. At the same time I could no longer
have any doubts that Peter's surmises about him were correct, "That old
gentleman aboard the felucca is Captain Ralph, then," I thought to
myself, "If I ever fall in with him, I shall know how to address him, at
all events." At length the captain awoke; and after an early breakfast,
the owner took him round the plantation, and I was allowed to follow
them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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