“Then it must come out again, Freeman. My mind is made up, and the Ruffling Harry must go slaving to Whydah.”
All argument and persuasion were vain, so the manager had dolefully to clear the ship once more.
And then Copley Banks began to make preparations for his African voyage. It appeared that he relied upon force rather than barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried none of those showy trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted with eight nine-pounder guns and racks full of muskets and cutlasses.
The after sail-room next the cabin was transformed into a powder magazine, and she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer. Water and provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
But the preparation of his ship’s company was most surprising. It made Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port – men whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to furnish them.
There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been present at the killing of the log-wood cutters, so that his hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a red afterglow from that great crime. He was first mate, and under him was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell Davies at the taking of Cape Coast Castle.
The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk. His beard had been shaved, and it was impossible to recognise him as the same man whom Sharkey had placed under the knife, and who had escaped to tell his experiences to Copley Banks.
(действия эти не остались незамеченными, и их обсуждали на главных улицах Кингстона;
(комендант гарнизона майор от артиллерии Харви;
)
(выразил губернатору серьезную озабоченность;
).
These doings were not unnoticed, nor yet uncommented upon in the town of Kingston. The Commandant of the troops – Major Harvey, of the Artillery – made serious representations to the Governor.
“She is not a trader, but a small warship,” said he. “I think it would be as well to arrest Copley Banks and to seize the vessel.”
“What do you suspect?” asked the Governor, who was a slow-witted man, broken down with fevers and port wine.
“I suspect,” said the soldier, “that it is Stede Bonnet over again.”
Now, Stede Bonnet was a planter of high reputation and religious character, who, from some sudden and overpowering freshet of wildness in his blood, had given up everything in order to start off pirating in the Caribbean Sea. The example was a recent one, and it had caused the utmost consternation in the islands. Governors had before now been accused of being in league with pirates, and of receiving commissions upon their plunder, so that any want of vigilance was open to a sinister construction.
“Well, Major Harvey,” said he, “I am vastly sorry to do anything which may offend my friend Copley Banks, for many a time have my knees been under his mahogany, but in face of what you say there is no choice for me but to order you to board the vessel and to satisfy yourself as to her character and destination.”
So at one in the morning Major Harvey, with a launchful of his soldiers, paid a surprise visit to the Ruffling Harry, with the result that they picked up nothing more solid than a hempen cable floating at the moorings. It had been slipped by the brig, whose owner had scented danger. She had already passed the Palisades, and was beating out against the north-east trades on a course for the Windward Passage.
(когда следующим утром бриг оставил /в стороне/ мыс Моран;
(еле заметное облачко тумана в южной стороне горизонта;
(и Копли Бэнкс открыл им свои планы)
(он выбрал их, сказал он, как проворных и смелых парней;
)
(кто скорее рискнет собой в море;
(чем будет жить в нищете на берегу;
(королевские суда малочисленны и слабы), and they could master any trader (и они смогли бы захватить любое торговое судно; to master – одолевать, справляться) who might come their way (которое могло попасться на их пути; to come – приходить; появляться, встречаться).