His loss made the Captain daily more sour and irascible. His suspicion naturally fell heaviest on Ebenezer and Bertrand: though he had no reason to believe that either had prior knowledge of the Journal's presence on the ship and no evidence that either had stolen it — both had been seen aboard the Cyprian, for example — he nevertheless confined them to their cell again, out of ill humor. At the same time he had the Moor lay ten stripes on the sailmaker's aged back as punishment for failing to see the thief: the flogging could be heard in the rope-locker, and Ebenezer had to remind himself, uncomfortably, that the manuscript was exceedingly valuable to the cause of order and justice in Maryland. To Bertrand, who had nearly swooned during the search of their quarters, he declared that he had thrown the Journal into the sea for fear of discovery, and that old Carl was after all a pirate whom any judge ashore would doubtless hang.
"Nonetheless," he added resolutely, "should I hear they mean to kill or torture anyone for't, even that loathesome beast Boabdil, I shall confess." Whether he would in fact, he did not care to wonder; he made the vow primarily for Bertrand's sake, to forestall another defection.
"Small difference whether ye do or no," the valet answered. "Our time's nigh up in either case." He was, indeed, perilously disheartened; from the first he had been skeptical of Ebenezer's plan to escape, and even that long chance was precluded by their present confinement. In vain did Ebenezer point out that it was Bertrand who, by his conduct aboard the Cyprian, had spoiled their best opportunity to escape: such truths are never consolations.
Their prospects darkened as the day of the shallop's scheduled rendezvous approached. They heard the crew in the fo'c-'sle complain of the Captain's mounting severity: three had been put on short rations for no greater crime than that Pound had overheard them comparing notes on the Cyprian women; a fourth, who as spokesman for the group had inquired how soon they would put into some port, had been threatened with keelhauling. Daily the two prisoners feared that he would take it into his head to put them to some form of torture. The one bright happenstance of the entire period, both for the crew and for Ebenezer, was the news that the Moor, whom they had come to resent for executing the Captain's orders, had been blessed by one of his victims on the brigantine with a social disease.
"Whether 'tis French pox or some other I don't know," said the man who had the news, "but he is sore as a boil of't and cannot walk to save him."
Ebenezer readily assumed that it was the girl in the mizzen-rigging who had been infected, for though Boabdil had assuredly not confined his exercise to her, none of the other pirates showed signs of the malady. The disclosure gave him a complexly qualified pleasure: in the first place he was glad to see the Moor thus repaid for the rape, yet he quite understood the oddity of this emotion in the light of his own intentions. Second, the relief he felt at so narrowly escaping contagion himself, like the relief at having his chastity preserved for him, failed to temper his disappointment as he thought it should. And third, the presence of infection suggested that the girl had not been virginal, and this likelihood occasioned in him the following additional and not altogether harmonious feelings: chagrin at having somewhat less cause to loathe the Moor and relish his affliction; disappointment at what he felt to be a depreciation of his own near-conquest; alarm at the implication of this disappointment, which seemed to be that his motives for assaulting the girl were more cruel than even the Moor's, who would not have assumed her to be virginal in the first place; awe at the double perversity that though his lust had been engendered at least partially by pity for what he took to be a deflowered maiden, yet he felt in his heart that the pity was nonetheless authentic and would have been heightened, not diminished, during his own attack on her, whereas the revelation that she had not lost her maidenhead to Boabdil materially diminished it; and finally, a sort of overarching joy commingled with relief at a suspicion that seemed more probable every time he reviewed it — the suspicion that his otherwise not easily accountable possession by desire, contingent as it had been on the assumption of her late deflowering and his consequent pity, was by the very perverseness of that contingency rendered almost innocent, an affair as it were between virgins. This mystic yearning of the pure to join his ravished sister in impurity: was it not, in fact, self-ravishment, and hence a variety of love?
"Very likely," he concluded, and chewed his index fingernail for joy.
How Captain Pound explained his dereliction, the Laureate never learned. The six weeks ran their course; well after dark on the appointed day the prisoners heard another ship saluted by the pirates, and the sound of visitors brought aboard from a longboat. Whatever the nature of the parley, it was brief: after half an hour the guests departed. All hands were ordered aloft, and into the rope-locker came the sounds of the pirates making sail in the gentle breeze. As soon as the shallop gained steerage-way the acting first mate — none other than the boatswain impressed from the Poseidon, who had so rapidly and thoroughly adjusted to his new circumstances that Pound appointed him to replace the ailing Moor — climbed down into the fo'c'sle, unlocked the door of the brig, and ordered the prisoners on deck.
"Aie!" cried Bertrand. " 'Tis the end!"
"What doth this mean?" the Laureate demanded.
" 'Tis the end! 'Tis the end!"
" 'Tis the end o' thy visit," the boatswain grumbled. "I'll say that much."
"Thank Heav'n!" Ebenezer cried. "Is't not as I said, Bertrand?"
"Up with ye, now."
"One moment," the poet insisted. "I beg you for a moment alone, sir, ere I go with you. I must give thanks to my Savior." And without waiting for reply he fell to his knees in an attitude of prayer.
"Ah, well, then — " The boatswain shifted uncertainly, but finally stepped outside the cell. "Only a moment, though; the Captain's in foul spirits."
As soon as he was alone Ebenezer snatched the Journal manuscript from its hiding-place nearby and thrust it into his shirt. Then he joined Bertrand and the boatswain.
"I am ready, friend, and to this cell bid Adieu right gladly. Is't a boat hath come for us, or are we so near shore? 'Sblood, how this lifts my heart!"
The boatswain merely grunted and preceded them up the companionway to the deck, where they found a mild and moonless mid-September night. The shallop rode quietly under a brilliant canopy of stars. All hands were congregated amidships, several holding lanterns, and greeted their approach with a general murmur. Ebenezer thought it only fit that he bid them farewell with a bit of verse, since all in all they had, save for the past six weeks, treated him quite unobjectionably: but there was not time to compose, and all he had in stock, so to speak (his notebook having been left behind, to his great sorrow, on the Poseidon) was a little poem of welcome to Maryland that he had hatched at sea and committed to memory — unhappily not appropriate to the occasion. He resolved therefore to content himself with a few simple remarks, no less well turned for their brevity, the substance of which would be that while he could not approve of their way of life, he was nonetheless appreciative of their civil regard for himself and his man. Moreover, he would conclude, what a man cannot condone he may yet forgive: Many a deed that the head reviles finds absolution in the heart; and while he could not but insist, should they ever be apprehended at their business, that their verdict be just, he could pray nonetheless, and would with his whole heart, that their punishment be merciful.