From the South Seas and the coral reef they sailed for weeks on end towards their harbourage. Not only the crew, but Clegg himself thought of nothing but the horror of that marooning. Save on duty, Clegg kept to his cabin.
He seemed dazed. On one occasion he called Mipps and whispered:
“Look at my forearm, here above the wrist. I was never tattooed in all my life, and yet there is the picture of a man walking the plank with a shark beneath. How came this symbol here?”
“I done it for you,” said Mipps—“that night at Santiago, after we'd sacked the town. You and me was drinking, and I never see you drunk before. You ordered me to do it with the help of Yellow Pete, the cook.”
“I can see Pete's face looking up at me dead from the sea, always,” whispered Syn. “It was a fault, this tattooing. A man can be identified so easily by that, and I have suddenly no wish to be known as Clegg. Nicholas is tattooed from head to foot. I have driven him round and round the world, and he has fled because he could be so easily identified. Now I am in like case, for I am followed by the dead hulk of that mulatto. So long as I sail ships, so long will he be following in the wake. If I give up my chase of Nicholas, perhaps that haunting corpse will give up chasing me. I always feel him following the ship, just as I always see Yellow Pete's face in the waters. 'Tis bad enough to be shadowed by a living man, as Nicholas has been; but to be followed by a corpse is too much to endure. Where can I hide from it?”
“Dymchurch-under-the-Wall,” whispered Mipps. “Go back there as parson and thank God for a whole skin. Maybe I will go there one day too, but now for your sake, sir, it's better if we separate. Shuhshuhgah and myself have spoke of it. We can hide up your tracks. I take your sea-chest and stow it safe in Boston, where you can book passage for England. You must get to Boston by way of the Redskins' country. You and the long-missing Shuhshuhgah, returning like the prodigals, after years of preaching the 'Oly Gospel to the savages.”
“And give up my vengeance?” asked Syn.
“You may as easily catch Black Nick there as on the high seas of the world,” said Mipps. “Besides, he may be dead, same as he said his wife was when he wrote and pleaded with you for mercy.”
“I'll not believe she's dead,” said Syn. “He is a proved liar. When he sent me that letter some years ago, I knew it in my heart he lied. I think even yet I'll reckon with them both. Aye, perhaps at Dymchurch.”
Many months later, Doctor Syn, with the Redskin's help, rejoined Mipps in Boston. By this time he had begun to think that Nicholas must be dead.
“So all that is left to me,” he said, “is Romney Marsh and quiet years. But will the past rise up against me even there?”
“Not so far as the pirates is concerned,” replied Mipps. “And let me tell you, sir, the Imogene ain't the first ship to have gone to Davy Jones' Locker through a piece of carelessness in the powder magazine.”
“Have you done that again?” demanded Syn.
Mipps looked offended. “I'm a 'one-man servant', I am, sir, and dead pirates tell no tales.”
Mipps nodded. “Every man aboard. And no deaf mutes this time swimming about neither. A thorough job I made of it, believe me, sir.”
“God rest their souls!” said the parson piously.
“Amen,” relied Mipps with equal piety.
