"Hookynaster!--Hookynaster!" growled Jack Fuller, who
had followed to hear the examination of his immediate
captive: "why, your honour, that jaw-breaking name reminds
me as how the chap had a bit of a paper when I chucked
him into the jolly boat, stuck in his girdle. It was
covered over with pencil-marks, as writing like; but all
was rubbed out agin, except some such sort of a name as
that."
"Where is it?--what have you done with it?" hastily asked
Captain de Haldimar.
"Here, in my backy-box, your honour. I kept it safe,
thinking as how it might sarve to let us know all about
it afterwards."
The sailor now drew from the receptacle just named a
dirty piece of folded paper, deeply impregnated with the
perfume of stale and oft rechewed quids of coarse tobacco;
and then, with the air of one conscious of having "rendered
the state some service," hitched up his trowsers with
one hand, while with the other he extended the important
document.
To glance his eye hurriedly over the paper by the light
of a dark lanthorn that had meanwhile been brought upon
deck, unclasp his hunting-knife, and divide the ligatures
of the captive, and then warmly press his liberated hands
within his own, were, with Captain de Haldimar, but the
work of a minute.
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