‘We shall be able to score one good point,’ said he. ‘The mate Rotch, some five or six years ago, quarrelled with your sweetheart Tom, at Valparaiso. Butler was then mate of a ship. They met at a fandango. Rotch insulted a young lady Butler had been dancing with and had previously known. Your sweetheart took him by the throat and backed him out of the room, half suffocated and black in the face. Strangely enough, two years later, Butler found himself master of a small Indiaman, called the _Chanticleer_, with this same man Rotch as second mate under him. The mate of the _Chanticleer_ complained much of Rotch’s insolence. One night, when in Soundings, homeward bound, Butler found Rotch sleeping in his watch, with a dozen ships looming dark all round. This was extraordinary. Butler reported his conduct to the owners of the _Chanticleer_, and the man lost his berth. But on your sweetheart learning that Rotch had been married shortly before sailing, and that a child had been born to him during his absence at sea, he went to work to procure his reinstatement or to obtain another situation for him, and was successful. There may be other motives; but here is a point that must go far to confirm Butler’s declaration that he is the victim of a conspiracy.’ I listened greedily. I kept my eyes, smarting and burning, fastened upon my uncle’s face. ‘What is scuttling a ship?’ I asked. ‘Did I not explain? It is boring a hole in her so that she may sink.’ ‘Who says that Tom bored a hole in his ship?’ ‘Rotch and Nodder and two seamen.’ ‘Did they see him bore the hole?’ ‘They affirm that they saw the holes which he had bored, and discovered a tree-nail auger in his cabin.’ ‘Oh, he would not do it!’ I cried. ‘It is a lie! He is innocent!’ Here my aunt advised me to go to bed, and said that she herself could sit up no longer. But I detained my uncle for another half hour with many feverish, impassioned questions, before I could force myself from the room, and a church bell struck one through the stillness of the snowing night as I went to the bedroom that had been prepared for me.