Watery Grave by Bruce Alexander

defense — or so thinks Sir John.”
    “You were there today, with Sir John —and you went aboard the Adventure . Tell me all you saw and heard. Please, Jeremy, I must know.”
    Thus I came to give Tom Durham as full and true a report as ever I had given Sir John on any matter. He listened quite attentive as I told how the magistrate, in his clever questioning, had near forced Lieutenant Hartsell to admit that he could see little in that moment he now confidently claimed to have seen so much. I told him too of the dark rumblings of the crew as Sir John interrogated Hartsell before them. Then I jumped ahead and quoted the admiral’s misgivings, his talk of inciting mutiny, et cetera.
    “And what did Sir John say to that?” asked Tom, interrupting for the first time.
    “He said,” and I deepened my voice somewhat in imitation of him, ” ‘A captain who does not have the confidence of his crew is no captain at all.’”
    Tom laughed heartily at my performance. Then of a sudden he grew quite somber.
    “He is quite right, of course,” said he.” Yet the truth of it is, Lieutenant Hartsell does not have the confidence of the crew. And so the admiral was not wrong to suggest the possibility of mutiny.”
    “In port?” I asked, sounding quite incredulous.” In London? ‘
    “Not likely,” said he, “but anything can happen on the open sea. I would wager that had he made his accusation against Lieutenant Lan-don earlier, and had the crew learned of it, there would have been mutiny on the Adventure . At the very least, Hartsell would have met with a fatal accident. That, I am sure, is why he did not confine him to quarters and let out the charge until the night before we anchored.”
    “Was Lieutenant Landon really so well Uked?”
    “He was the ablest, bravest, fairest, and best officer we had. Hartsell may have been acting captain, but Landon was the leader of the ship — but what of him? Tell me now. ‘
    And so, very shortly, I did just that. Would that I could have given Tom a more favorable picture of his favorite. Yet what had I to describe but a melancholy man who greeted us, Bible in hand, and was apparently resigned to his fate? All he could offer in his defense was that he certainly had not pushed the captain overboard but was attempting to pull him back —which, in any case, Sir John had already perceived.
    (You will note, reader, that I withheld from Tom any mention of the peculiarly personal relation between Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Redmond and Lieutenant Landon o th.e Adventure ; nor especially did I mention the looks which passed between them at a certain crucial moment during Sir John’s questioning of the lieutenant. Such information I considered to be the property of the magistrate —and his alone.)
    That Tom Durham was saddened by my account I had no doubt, for he remained silent for quite some time after I had finished, though his face was as near without expression as could be. He seemed to me to be deep in thought.
    At last he turned to me and said: “I wish there was a way I could help him.”
    “Perhaps one will present itself.”
    “Perhaps.”
    We talked of many more things that night: of Black Jack Bilbo and Jimmie Bunkms; of the admiral’s coming visit; of the strange lives both of us had led—orphaned, uprooted, thrown to our own devices —but it was only toward the end of the evening, as we were yawning and about to take ourselves to bed, that Tom happened to mention Annie. He asked me about her —who she was and how I had come to know her. Briefly, I told him something of the Goodhope matter, and said merely that Annie had worked in the kitchen of the great house in St. James Street.
    “Really?” said he, “I was in just such a house in St. James today — Mr. Bilbo’s it was.”
    “The same one,” said I.
    “Was it indeed? Well, I suppose Lord Goodhope had little use for it, being dead and all.”
    We sniggered together at Tom’s rough joke like the careless boys