"To the privateer?"
"Why not? It can't be more than a few hundred yards. I've often done more."
"Well, what if you did get there?" curt and sarcastic. "Summon her to surrender, else you'd take her by storm and put the lot to the sword, I suppose?"
"Why, board her, sir, and run the flag up! She's not a man-of-war.
They'll be keeping no watch, likely as not."
The boy was in a white blaze.
"They won't see it till broad daylight!" he panted, pressing. "And by that time the Gentleman, if he's hanging about, will see it too. If they haul it down then and run up the tricolour, he'll think it's a decoy."
There was something contagious about the lad's white-hot enthusiasm.
The light was coming and going in the Parson's eyes.
The scheme was as mad as you like. Still, there was a chance of success, a fighting chance. And was it not the only one?
Himself he no more doubted the lad's story than he doubted that a month since he had crossed swords with Fighting Fitz. But who else would believe?