“But _you_; and how you managed it I don’t know. As for me, I gave leg-bail in the Gambia. Come, Jones, Thompson, Robinson, or any thing you please to call yourself, fear nothing from me. I owe you a debt of gratitude. I shipped myself in that villanous slaver, a runaway-apprentice; and, when struck down by fever, and dying of thirst upon my passage out, the only hand in all that rascally ship’s company, to whom I was indebted for a drink of water to slake my burning thirst, was your’s; and now, seven years after, I survive to prove to you that kindness to a destitute boy has not been, and shall not be forgotten.” “It seems you know me,” I replied; “and concealment would be idle. It is, indeed, too true that all on board the slaver perished, save that negro who attends me, and myself.” “Ay,” said the rover; “but you may recollect that a boy was missing the night before you sailed. I was that lost one; and, from weariness of a miserable life, and disgust at the horrible duty imposed upon me, of attending to the slave-hold, every feeling had revolted. I bolted from the vessel; escaped a fate that none survived but you; passed through a thousand hair-breadth adventures; and now command the Flambeau--the sweetest schooner that ever spread canvass to a breeze. Come, I bear you have lost every thing again but life; try your luck once more with Captain Raleigh; and rest assured, that he who succoured the fevered boy, shall secure the friendship of the commander of the Flambeau,--a craft by some called a privateer, and by others set down--may Heaven forgive them!--as nothing better than a pirate!” I listened to the rover’s invitation. There was much that would induce a man, circumstanced as I was, to accept it; I seemed a being marked out for misfortune--for whom no happiness was predestined, and one, for whom fate had reserved the phials of her wrath. Captain Raleigh marked my hesitation. “Come,” said he, “time presses. You brought me, and for little advantage, I regret, out of my course this morning, and I must regain it speedily. You are, as far as I am concerned, a free agent. Come with me--you will be welcome; stay where you are--a hundred dollars are at your service, to begin the world anew, and the best wishes of the runaway apprentice you nursed on his passage to the Gambia. I’ll rejoin you in five minutes--a time sufficiently long for a man to come to a decision, as well as if he dreamed over it for a twelvemonth.” He turned, walked to another part of the vessel, and gave orders to his crew to man their boats, and prepare for returning to the schooner. Dominique had been a silent, but a most attentive observer of my tête-à-tête with Captain Raleigh, and I beckoned him to approach.