MERCHANT ADVENTURERS 17 



experience of piracy together it might be reasonable to 

 suppose that the master did not altogether trust him. 

 This was the fact, for Cummins had secretly given a 

 letter to John Darling, the eldest of the sailor-lads, to 

 deliver to the young wife whom the master had married 

 only a month before he sailed from Hull in quest of 

 gold. 



By June Shepherd had secured a fine ship called 

 the Mary Rose, in which he meant to go gold-hunting 

 on his own account. But the ship was not fully paid 

 for, and though Shepherd tried to get Cummins's 

 supposed widow and mother to advance him money, 

 they refused. He had declared that the captain was 

 dead, and that he bore no message or letter from him, 

 although, as a matter of fact, the master had given him 

 sailing instructions in writing and a letter for delivery to 

 the young wife a duplicate of that which had been 

 entrusted to Darling. 



The boy Darling had done his duty faithfully, and it 

 happened that the woman knew that the captain was 

 alive when the longboat left. Darling had forwarded 

 his precious parcel from London by a coasting-vessel 

 which had put in at Hull. In a covering letter he 

 warned Mistress Cummins not to be too trustful of 

 Michael Shepherd, and said he would have delivered 

 the packet personally, but he was unable to leave his 

 bed, since he had suffered cruelly from the effects of 

 three weeks' exposure in the longboat, until rescued by 

 a whale ship. Before the rescue took place, two of the 

 sailors and one of the boys had died. 



The story now becomes more romantic. Shepherd 

 was despairing of raising the needed money when a slim 



