Duckworthy concluded his confession by declaring that in his
opinion he himself, the Portuguese sailing-master, the captain of
The Bloody Hand, and Hunt were the only ones of Captain Keitt's
crew who were now alive; for that The Good Fortune must have
broken up in a storm, which immediately followed their desertion
of her; in which event the entire crew must inevitably have
perished.
It may be added that Duckworthy himself was shortly hanged, so
that, if his surmise was true, there was now only three left
alive of all that wicked crew that had successfully carried to
its completion the greatest adventure which any pirate in the
world had ever, perhaps, embarked upon.
I. Jonathan Rugg
You may never know what romantic aspirations may lie hidden
beneath the most sedate and sober demeanor.
To have observed Jonathan Rugg, who was a tall, lean,
loose-jointed young Quaker of a somewhat forbidding aspect, with
straight, dark hair and a bony, overhanging forehead set into a
frown, a pair of small, deep-set eyes, and a square jaw, no one
would for a moment have suspected that he concealed beneath so
serious an exterior any appetite for romantic adventure.
Nevertheless, finding himself suddenly transported, as it were,
from the quiet of so sober a town as that of Philadelphia to the
tropical enchantment of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, the
night brilliant with a full moon that swung in an opal sky, the
warm and luminous darkness replete with the mysteries of a
tropical night, and burdened with the odors of a land breeze, he
suddenly discovered himself to be overtaken with so vehement a
desire for some unwonted excitement that, had the opportunity
presented itself, he felt himself ready to embrace any adventure
with the utmost eagerness, no matter whither it would have
conducted him.
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