Had she been left at Antigua and auctioned off, she might have fetched them all over ?15,000, and would still have safely been there!

The eternally sozzled incompetents of the Dominica Court admitted that a man claiming to be the prize's Quartermaster's Mate had come ashore at the sleepy port of Roseau, sculling a boat by himself, saying that, if a certain time period had elapsed without Proteus's return to Dominica, his captain had left verbal orders to sail her to the court at Antiqua, to which Roseau's court was ancillary. They'd been so lax in their dealings, they couldn't even adequately describe him, but… they'd let him sail, anyway, the thoughtless clods!

Lewrie had left Midshipman Burns, his Bosun's Mate Mr. Towpenny, three other hands, and Quartermaster's Mate Toby Jugg aboard the prize.

And Toby Jugg was a man to be leery of.

After all, they'd pressed him off a Yankee brig engaged in smuggling arms to the French, and rebel slaves on Saint-Domingue, in the Danish Virgins the year before. American certificates of citizenship-either forged, false, or merely purchased from Yankee consuls-bedamned, Jugg had appeared as British as John Bull, and liable to the press, no matter where he was found. Jugg's plaint of an impoverished wife and daughter on Barbados had prompted Lewrie to suggest Jugg take the guinea Joining Bounty, to forward on to support his wife and child. He'd even promoted the man to Able Seaman, then Quartermaster's Mate, but… if Toby Jugg had found a way to overpower, or beguile, the rest of the hands, been glib enough to get them to desert with the prize to an enemy port, where they'd be safe from capture in the future for the crime… sell her off for half her potential value, and "go shares" so each would be rich and idle for life, well!

Had Jugg been aided by former "associates" who'd slunk into the bay to wood and water, or look for an easy capture; had he encountered criminal "jetsam" loafing ashore on Dominica, who'd put him up to it?