Countenance brightened with a vast relief, first mate Jack Paul stretches his hand across the table. Captain Denbigh, shifting his glass to the left hand, grasps it. “Done!” says first mate Jack Paul. “An’ done to you, my hearty!” exclaims Captain Denbigh. “The money’ll be yours, mate Jack, as soon as ever we sees Kingston light. An’ now for another hooker of rum to bind the bargain.” CHAPTER III--THE YELLOW JACK At Kingston, Captain Denbigh goes ashore with first mate Jack Paul, and pays over in Bank of England paper those one thousand pounds which represent that one-sixth interest in the _John O’Gaunt_. While the pair are upon this bit of maritime business, the three hundred mournful blacks are landed under the supervision of the second mate. Among the virtues which a cargo of slaves possesses over a shipment of cotton or sugar or rum, is the virtue of legs. This merit is made so much of by the energetic second officer of the _John O’Gaunt_, that, within half a day, the last of the three hundred blacks is landed on the Kingston quay. Received and receipted for by a bilious Spaniard with an umbrella hat, who is their consignee, the blacks are marched away to the stockade which will confine them while awaiting distribution among the plantations. Captain Denbigh puts to sea with the _John O’Gaunt_ in ballast the same evening. A brisk seaman, and brisker man of business, is Captain Denbigh, and no one to spend money and time ashore, when he may be making the one and saving the other afloat. First mate Jack Paul, his fortune of one thousand pounds safe in the strong-boxes of the Kingston bank, sallies forth to look for a ship. He decides to go passenger, for the sake of seeing what it is like, and his first thought is to visit his brother William by the Rappahannock. This fraternal venture he forbears, when he discovers Kingston to be in the clutch of that saffron terror the yellow fever. Little is being locally said of the epidemic, for the town is fearful of frightening away its commerce. The Kingston heart, like most human hearts, thinks more of its own gold than of the lives of other men. Wherefore Kingston is sedulous to hide the plague in its midst, lest word go abroad on blue water and drive away the ships. First mate Jack Paul becomes aware of Kingston for the death-trap it is before he is ashore two days. It is the suspicious multitude of funerals thronging the sun-baked streets, that gives him word. And yet the grewsome situation owns no peculiar threat for him, since he has sailed these blistering latitudes so often and so much that he may call himself immune. For him, the disastrous side is that, despite the Kingston efforts at concealment, a plague-whisper drifted out to sea, and as a cautious consequence the Kingston shipping has dwindled to be nothing. This scarcity of ships vastly interferes with that chance of a passage home.