"Aye, we do but seek to drive yonder knaves ashore," Murray assured her. "They can not reach us at this distance."
She surveyed the scene with a doubting eye and was constrained to credit us.
"But why is the light so strange?" she demanded. "'Tis as if the door of a cookstove was ajar."
"We are in for bad weather, sweet," replied my great-uncle. "You must go below."
But she shrank away from him and clutched firmly an arm of Peter and me, each.
"No, no, I'll not be going down there again," she cried. "On the inside of a door I can think of naught but the sorrow that is come upon me. I'll stay up here in the open."
"Certes, this will be no safe place in a storm," I urged.
But she clung the tighter to us.
"I'll not go down. I'd sooner be taken by the pirates than go down. Down there the noises of the water and the ship will be like the crying of the banshee in the Green Room where grandfather died. No, no! In the cabin there is only death, and the light is dim, and the noises will be whispering at my elbow the livelong time. I'll have none of it! Sure, I care not what danger there is, if I can stay up here and meet it in the open."
"We let you stay," said Peter soothingly. "Ja, we better let der little gal stay, Murray. Bob andt I, we take care of her."