"You speak with overconfidence," rebuked my father. "There are men alive today who can remember when Morgan and Davis and Dampier and many another brave fellow of the same kidney lived by piracy and served the King at one and the same time. Some of 'em were hung in the end, and Morgan died a knight. It can be done."
"How?"
"Consider, my boy! Murray—your great-uncle, mind you!—is a Jacobite. For our present Government he hath only hatred and contempt. Any means by which that Government was undermined would seem to him justifiable as aiding to bring about its downfall. Look to the fantastic humor of the man in naming his ship the Royal James!"
"If he be, indeed, the man you think he is," I returned, none too well pleased with the thought of having a pirate for a great-uncle. My father laughed kindly, and tapped me on the knee with his free hand.
"I know how you feel, dear lad," he said. "'Twas so identically your mother talked. Bless her heart! We were fresh married when the precious rascal sent us by one of his tarry-breeks that necklace which lies now in my strong-box—the loot of some Indian queen mayhap. Afterward—after she had died—when you were scarce breeched—he sent again; those silver plates upon the sideboard in the dining-room. Dishonestly come by, of course; but what was I to do? I could not cast them in the river, nor did I know how to return them to him. And after that again came a third messenger, this time with no more than a letter in which he condoled with me upon the loss of her whom we had both reverenced above all others!
"Then, I admit, I could have strangled him, for had he been successful in his plans he would have mated her with a Frenchman who was servant to the Foul Fiend. Yet in his way he cared for her, and he took much interest in all she did. By hook or crook he had word of us, however far he wandered. He knew when you were born. He knew when she died. And now that you have reached manhood he shows his sails outside Sandy Hook. I do not know what it means, Robert, but I like it not! I like it not!"
"But we are not at sea," I protested. "We are in New York. There are soldiers in Fort George. Commodore Burrage will be down from Boston anon. What can a pirate ship, what can two pirate ships, effect against us? Why, the city train-bands——"
"'Tis not force I dread," my father cut me off. "'Tis the infernal cleverness of a warped mind."
"Ja," agreed Peter.
My father thrust the stem of his pipe toward him.