The stranger seized the opportunity to take his arm, and lead him with the half familiarity of powerful protection to a bench beneath the refectory window.

Taking out his watch again, he put it in the passive hands of the astonished priest, saying, "Time me," cleared his throat, and began:-- "Fourteen years ago there was a ship cruisin' in the Pacific, jest off this range, that was ez nigh on to a Hell afloat as anything rigged kin be.

If a chap managed to dodge the cap'en's belaying-pin for a time he was bound to be fetched up in the ribs at last by the mate's boots.
There was a chap knocked down the fore hatch with a broken leg in the Gulf, and another jumped overboard off Cape Corrientes, crazy as a loon, along a clip of the head from the cap'en's trumpet.

Them's facts.
The ship was a brigantine, trading along the Mexican coast.

The cap'en had his wife aboard, a little timid Mexican woman he'd picked up at Mazatlan.