"The brute!" cried Rattray. "The cowardly, cruel, foreign devil!
And you never let out one word of that!"

"What was the good?" said I. "They are all gone now - all gone to
their account. Every man of us was a brute at the last. There was
nothing to be gained by telling the public that."

He let me go on until I came to another point which I had hitherto
kept to myself: the condition of the dead mate's fingers: the cries
that the sight of them had recalled.

"That Portuguese villain again!" cried my companion, fairly leaping
from the chair which I had left and he had taken. "It was the work
of the same cane that killed the steward. Don't tell me an
Englishman would have done it; and yet you said nothing about that
either!"

It was my first glimpse of this side of my young host's character.
Nor did I admire him the less, in his spirited indignation, because
much of this was clearly against myself. His eyes flashed. His
face was white. I suddenly found myself the cooler man of the two.

"My dear fellow, do consider!" said I. "What possible end could
have been served by my stating what I couldn't prove against a man
who could never be brought to book in this world? Santos was
punished as he deserved; his punishment was death, and there's an
end on't."

"You might be right," said Rattray, "but it makes my blood boil to
hear such a story. Forgive me if I have spoken strongly;" and he