The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...Sala, George Augustus
General
The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...
Sala, George Augustus
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction
say, he had run away at Grande in the Brazils, to marry a brown
Portugee woman; and the Doctor of Physic he was all for Herbal
Treatment, demanding Succory, Agrimony, Asarabacca, Knights-pound-wort,
Cuckoo-point, Hulver-bush, with Alehoof, and other things not to be
found in this part of the World. And Captain Blokes said that he knew
nothing half so good for a Gunshot Wound as cold Rum-and-Water; and
between the two I had like to have died, but all were very kind to me,
even to extracting the Ball with a Pair of Snuffers; and a great clumsy
thing the said missile was, being, I verily believe, part of a
Door-hinge which these clumsy Spanish Brutes had broken off short to
cram into their Guns; and yet it might have gone worse with me had it
been a smooth round cast Bullet, and drilled a clean Wound right through
my Body.
As I was coming round, even to the taking of some Sangaree and Chicken
Panada (for we were now very well provided with Live Stock), the
Captain said to me: "You ha'n't murdered a man, Brother, have you?"
I replied, starting up, that my hands were free from the stain of Blood
unrighteously spilt.
"No offence, Brother Dangerous," continued the Captain. "In our line of
life we ar'n't particular. It wouldn't take very dirty weather to make
our Ensign look like a Black Flag. Piracy and Privateering--they both
begin with a P. I thought you had something o' that sort on your mind,
because you took it so woundily about being hanged."
"I have had a strange life," I answered faintly.
"No doubt about that," says the Captain. "So have I, Brother, and not an
over-good one: that's why I asked you. If the old woman hadn't been in
the oven herself, she'd never have gone there to look for her daughter.
But have you anything on your mind, Brother? Is there anything that
Billy Blokes can do for you?"
I answered, very gratefully, that there was nothing I could think of.
"'Cause why," he resumed, "if there is, you have only to sing out. If
you think you're like to slip your Cable and would like to say
something, we've got a Padre on board out of the last Prize, and he
shall come and do the Right Thing for you. You don't know anything about
his lingo; but what odds is that? Spanish, or Thieves' Latin, or
rightdown Cockney,--it's all one when the word's given to pipe all
hands."
I answered that I was no Papist, but a humble member of the Church of
England as by Law established.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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