We saw no one in authority. Hour by hour my wounds
healed and my strength returned. If it was a dark and noisome
prison, if there were hunger and thirst and inaction to be endured,
if we knew not how near to us might be a death of ignominy, yet
the minister and I found the jewel in the head of the toad; for in
that time of pain and heaviness we became as David and Jonathan.
At last some one came beside the brute who brought us food. A
quiet gentleman, with whitening hair and bright dark eyes, stood
before us. He had ordered the two men with him to leave open the
hatch, and he held in his hand a sponge soaked with vinegar.
"Which of you is - or rather was - Captain Ralph Percy?" he asked,
in a grave but pleasant voice.
"I am Captain Percy," I answered.
He looked at me with attention. "I have heard of you before," he
said. "I read the letter you wrote to Sir Edwyn Sandys, and thought
it an excellently conceived and manly epistle. What magic
transformed a gentleman and a soldier into a pirate?"
As he waited for me to speak, I gave him for answer, "Necessity."
"A sad metamorphosis," he said. "I had rather read of nymphs
changed into laurel and gushing springs. I am come to take you,
sir, before the officers of the Company aboard this ship, when, if
you have aught to say for yourself, you may say it. I need not tell
you, who saw so clearly some time ago the danger in which you
then stood, that your plight is now a thousandfold worse.
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