his passage. The captain declared he would have no idle foreign vagabond
in his ship to eat up the provisions of Englishmen who worked. With his
own hands he cast the hen-coop into the water, and (assisted by one of
his sailors) he threw the man after it, and told him to float back to
Liverpool with the evening tide."

"A lie!" cried Turlington, addressing himself, not to Sir Joseph, but to
Launce.

"Are you acquainted with the circumstances?" asked Launce, quietly.

"I know nothing about the circumstances. I say, from my own experience,
that foreign sailors are even greater blackguards than English sailors.
The man had met with an accident, no doubt. The rest of his story was a
lie, and the object of it was to open Sir Joseph's purse."

Sir Joseph mildly shook his head.

"No lie, Richard. Witnesses proved that the man had spoken the truth."

"Witnesses? Pooh! More liars, you mean."

"I went to the owners of the vessel," pursued Sir Joseph. "I got from
them the names of the officers and the crew, and I waited, leaving the
case in the hands of the Liverpool police. The ship was wrecked at the
mouth of the Amazon, but the crew and the cargo were saved. The men
belonging to Liverpool came back. They were a bad set, I grant you. But
they were examined separately about the treatment of the foreign sailor,
and they all told the same story. They could give no account of their
captain, nor of the sailor who had been his accomplice in the crime,