“Heavens and earth! Yes. The money is as good as lost. What wild talk are you jabbering to me?” says the merchant derisively. [[206]]
“It isn’t wild talk!”
“Not wild talk about Alva’s repaying his debts?”
“No, for I’ll pay them.”
“You—a fighting man—pay five hundred thousand crowns? Your sufferings have made you crazy,” cries Niklaas, who thinks Guy is jeering him.
“Not at all. Advance me ten thousand crowns, stake your life as I stake mine, and I’ll give you your five hundred thousand crowns and vengeance.”
This comes in determined whisper from the Englishman, who has thought this matter over, and concluded that, Oliver being gone, Bodé Volcker, with his Antwerp storehouse, Antwerp ships and Antwerp knowledge, is the man to aid him in this affair, if he has the nerve.
“Stake my life? I’ll stake it a hundred times to gain vantage of the man who has robbed me!”
“Very well, come with me to my room, we must talk very privately of this,” says Guy, who now feels pretty certain that though Bodé Volcker might not risk his life for patriotism, he would risk it a dozen times over to get back his five hundred thousand crowns. But it is not this man’s motives he cares for, but this man’s action.
Arrived at Chester’s room the merchant says: “What do you want?”