The discovery acted like cool wind on Elderkin--it was unthinkable that they should perish now, not so very far from home, after all he had won through, and he prepared to meet this disaster also. He had prudently kept one last cask of rum unbroached, and this fluid life he now served out to the men. Then he drove them, as before with gun or Bible, but this time with rum; drove them to the task of frapping the leaking ship. Four great chain cables were passed under her and hove tight with Spanish windlasses on deck--a series of giant tourniquets to keep in her life. And when that too was accomplished, it was as though the power above at last was satisfied, and the wind strengthened that was to bear the _Spirito Santo_ home.
Nearly six months after leaving port with provisions enough for one; with her rotten ratlines hanging in little tags, her jury smoke-stack idle between the patched sails that seemed as though one more puff of wind would tear them from the battered yards, her spewing sides kept together with cables, and her broken bulwarks level with the water--a nightmare vessel manned by ghosts--she crawled into the roadstead at Port of Spain.
For a few years after, a ragged white man haunted the drink-shops of the Islands and hung about the ports--a man without a ship. The owners of the _Spirito Santo_ were broken by the safe return of that faked cargo, but they had passed the word round that her skipper was to be broken too. He who had been so self-controlled in the old unregenerate days now drank steadily, but it was only when he was very drunk he talked. And even then it was difficult to make out what he said--it was all such a jumble of some strange fight between two ships, and of how the ways of the Lord were so mysterious that it was often impossible for a man to tell upon which side righteousness might be found.
[A] Here follows in the original a minute description of the post-mortem.
[C] At that date Prisoner's Counsel was not allowed to make a speech for the defence.
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Spelling and hyphenation have been retained as they appear in the original publication, except as follows:
Page 62 She carries the water from St. Ann's _changed to_ She carries the water from St. Annan's