While the inn was ringing to the shouts of the revellers, the freebooter leaned across to Pierre Radisson.
"Gad's name if they like you," he mumbled drunkenly.
"Who?" asked Radisson.
"Fur Company," explained Blood. "They hate you! So they do me! But if the king favours you, they've got to have you," and he laughed to himself.
"That's the way with me," he whispered in drunken confidence to M. Radisson. "What a deuce?" he asked, turning drowsily to the table. "What's my boy doing?"
Young Lieutenant Blood was to his feet holding a reaming glass high as his head.
"Gentlemen, I give you the sweet savage!" he cried, "the Diana of the snows—a thistle like a rose—ice that burns—a pauper that spurns—"
"Curse me if he doesn't mean that saucy wench late come from your north fort," interrupted the father.
My hands were itching to throw a glass in the face of father or son, but Pierre Radisson restrained me.
"More to be done sometimes by doing nothing," he whispered.