“No; I have been a privateersman all my life, barring a few smuggling ventures in the late peace, but I have never put to sea without my letters of marque and reprisal, duly signed and sealed.”
Rupert curled his lip as he looked at the other.
“And what did your letters of marque say as to the Portuguese slaver we sank in the Gaboons?” he demanded scornfully. “And what of that Bristol schooner we mistook for a Frenchman off Finisterre, and had a thousand pounds of coffee out of, before we discovered the error?”
“No matter,” said Sims, setting his fist upon the table with an angry thump; “I don’t profess to be more particular than other men when I get on the high seas; but I’ve always got my letters of marque on board, and as long as I have them, d’ye see, they can’t hang me.”
Rupert seemed to be casting about for some way to satisfy his scruples. Presently he said—
“There’s no other way for it, then—we must alter the date.”
Mr. Sims gave a start, and let drop an oath.
“You’re a strange man, Gurney,” he said; “I can’t make you out this morning. You talk of forging the king’s commission as if it were no more than altering the log. Why, man, that’s a worse hanging matter than sailing with no papers at all!”
My cousin fairly lost his temper at this, and cursed the other for a thin-skinned numbskull.
“Either we sail or we don’t,” he concluded by saying, “and either we sail with a commission or without it. I am ready here to alter the date with my own hand—it is but turning a IV into a VI—to give us two years more, and you need know nothing of the matter.”