"Look out!" warned Joe. But there was nothing to fear. When yet a
little distance off, the man fell on his knees, and, holding up his
hands, in an attitude of supplication cried out in a hoarse voice:
"Don't say you're not real. Oh, dear God, don't let 'em say that!
Don't let 'em be visions of a dream! Don't, dear God!"
"Oh, speak to him, Jack!" begged Cora. "He thinks it's a vision.
Tell him we are real--that we've come to take him away--to find out
about our own dear ones--speak to him!"
There was no need. Her own clear voice had carried to the lonely
sailor, and had told him what he wanted to know.
"They speak! I hear them! They are real. And now, dear God, don't
let them go away!" he pleaded.
"We're not going away!" Jack called. "At least not until we help
you--if we can. Come over here and tell us all about it. Are you
from the Ramona?"
"The Ramona, yes. But if--if you're from her--if you've come to take
me back to her, I'm not going! I'd rather die first. I won't go
back! I won't be a pirate! You sha'n't make me! I'll stay here and
die first."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE REVENUE CUTTER
The story told by Ben Wrensch--for such proved to be the name of the
lonely sailor-cannot be set down as he told it. In the first place,
there was little of chronological order about it, and in the second
place he was interrupted so often by Cora, or one of the others,
asking questions, or he interrupted himself so frequently, that it
would be but a disjointed narrative at best.
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