Strange, is it not? Here’s all Scotland, raw with the sore of Darien, shouting for the healing ointment of English blood, and here is the company, heir of all the grievances and privileges of the Darien disaster, spending money to keep that relief from the angry sufferer. French folk say that in a mystery one must search for the woman. French folk are too naïve. One should look for the dollar, beside which the woman is but a key of putty with which to unlock the riddles of life. Here’s the thing: if the men of the _Worcester_ were convicted of piracy, that ship, under the law, would escheat to the Crown; otherwise, the Scotch African-Indian company was entitled to the possession of it as reprisal for the seizure of their ship _Annandale_. Thus thousands of pounds’ worth of ship and cargo would be lost to the company if Green were convicted and his ship set over to the Crown. In this none too simple world of ours a good end is sometimes strangely forwarded, not by those for whom it may be an advertised goal, but by ones who, so far as they know or care, are serving the completely selfish moment. This strife for the _Worcester_ put the ablest men of the Scotch bar at the service of Green and his crew, and gave his cause, and incidently that of justice in the abstract, the utmost help the times and practices permitted to the defense in a criminal action. These keen, adroit company lawyers wrung every drop of advantage they could, and on the law, as law, utterly routed the prosecution and luminously exposed the prejudice of the court. On Wednesday, March 21, the _coup-de-grâce_ was given. Captain Green and all the rest, including George Haines--doubtless sober now--received their sentences. It was decreed that one group of the defendants should on Wednesday, April 4, another group on the Wednesday following that, and the remainder on the third Wednesday, or April 18, “be taken to the sands of Leith, within the flood mark, betwixt the hours of eleven o’clock in the forenoon and four o’clock in the afternoon, and there be hanged upon a gibbet until they be dead.” And--that the ship _Worcester_, as the vessel of the pirates, should be set over to her majesty the queen. Antonio Ferdinando, cook’s mate, lay fevered on his pallet in one of the high attics of Edinburgh. There was a roaring in the street as of a public celebration; the cries welled up from below, the people of the house exulted on the stairs, and crowding into the sick room shouted, “The pirates are to die.” Antonio shivered, moaned and expired. III Gusts of rain were splashed by the spring winds round and about the hilly streets of Edinburgh; the defeated sun lay like a large pale yellow blot against the moist clouds. Yet very early in that morning of April 4 throngs of folk were crowding to the prison gates and scattering about the sands of Leith. For to-day Darien was to be avenged.