As for Drummond, many years later, on the occasion of the Porteous
riot, Forbes of Culloden declared in the House of Commons that a few
months after Green was hanged letters came from Captain Drummond, of
the 'Speedy Return,' 'and from the very ship for whose capture the
unfortunate person suffered, informing their friends that they were
all safe.' But the 'Speedy Return' was taken by pirates, two of her
crew say, off Madagascar, and burned. What was the date of the letters
from the 'Speedy Return' to which, long afterwards, Forbes, and he
alone, referred? What was the date of the capture of the 'Speedy
Return,' at Maritan, in Madagascar? Without the dates we are no wiser.
Now comes an incidental and subsidiary mystery. In 1729 was published
_Madagascar, or Robert Drury's Journal during Fifteen Years' Captivity
on that Island, written by Himself, digested into order, and now
published at the Request of his Friends_. Drury says, as we shall see,
that he, a lad of fifteen, was prisoner in Madagascar from _about_
1703 to 1718, and that there he met Captain Drummond, late of the
'Speedy Return.' If so, Green certainly did not kill Captain Drummond.
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