Then the officers scrambled down the side and jumped into the boat.

The line was cast off, the negro oarsmen began to pull away, and the poor red-coat took his doleful journey back to Nassau.

He must have felt pretty badly about it.
I have no doubt that when he hid himself down there in that dark hold, just before the vessel started, he thought he had made a pretty sure thing of it, and that it would not be long before he would be a free man, and could go where he pleased and do what he pleased in the wide United States.

But the case was very different now.

I suppose it was wrong, of course, for him to desert, and probably he was a mean sort of a fellow to do it; but we were all very sorry to see him taken away.
Corny thought that he was very likely a good man, who had been imposed upon, and that, therefore, it was right to run away.