"You must be Jack," he said pleasantly, and, dusting a piece of deck with his handkerchief, squatted down on the boards. Maybe his eyes were a little cold and fish-like, as though they'd looked on more than most men's but they seemed to quarrel with his face rather than suit it. The sun shone full upon him and lent him such radiance and warmth that I couldn't but exclaim in my heart: "This is no Captain of murderers! Not this good, kind, simple-seeming, just man! He is aboard by mistake! He keeps to his cabin in melancholy at the wickedness of the others." I got to my feet and would have pulled off my cap, if I'd had one - just as Mister Pobjoy foretold - for this neatly dressed gentleman with close-cut grey hair and country complexion had such an air about him! I couldn't believe he was who he was, for he stood there so plain and easy, with his legs astride and his hands behind his back. But it is some days later before Jack meets the dreadful pirate captain himself: I got a great shock, for he was not as I'd ever pictured him. He is spared and put to work with the gin-soaked pirate cook Pobjoy. All the honest crew are dead when he is eventually hauled onto the deck. And you might think that life has dished up the worst it can offer, until you crouch, terrified, in the blackness of the hold listening to the ship you have stowed away on being seized by pirates. You'd probably run away to sea too, if you were in his position. He doesn't have anything of his own, no family, no home, not even a proper name of his own.
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