"Ay de mi!" she exclaimed with a bubble of laughter. "How stupid of me to be forgetting I am just a maid off the sea to you. Ask for Colonel O'Donnell, sir, and tell him his daughter waits without."
And as I started toward the door she added gayly:
"It is not every girl could step upon a strange shore and find a cavalier waiting to aid her. But what would Mother Seraphina say to such brazenness? Ah, I can see her now! The blessed saints preserve us, Moira! Have ye no manners or modesty into yourself at all? A hundred Aves and the Stations of the Cross twice before you sup."
Her voice was still ringing in my ears as I shouldered a drunken sailor from my path, lowered my head to pass under the lintel of the tavern's entrance and so gained the hazy blue atmosphere of the taproom, cluttered with tables, foul with smoke and stale alelees, abuzz with rough voices bawling oaths and sea-songs.
It was the chorus of one of these songs which first distracted my thoughts from the Irish girl outside—a wild, roaring lilt of blood and ribaldry:
"Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
I looked to the corner whence it came, and discovered the one-legged sailor, John Silver, thumping the time with a pewter mug on the table-top as he led the group around him, foremost amongst whom, after himself, was Darby McGraw, flaming red mop standing out like a buccaneer ensign, shrill voice carrying above the thundering basses of his companions—as villainous a crew, to outward seeming, as I had ever looked upon. I noted especially a pasty, tallowy-faced man, whose shifty eyes were masked by a skrim of greasy black hair, and a big, lusty, mahogany-brown fellow with a tarry pigtail, who evidently found as much satisfaction in the song as poor, fuddled Darby.
Silver saw me almost as soon as I spotted him, and with a quick word to the others, got to his feet and stumped across the room, dragging Darby after him by the arm. His large, good-humored features were wreathed in a smile tinged with mortification.
"So you come after him, Master Ormerod, did you?" he shouted to make himself heard in the confusion. "And ashamed o' myself I oughter be, says you, and with reason, too. But I'm not one to lead a likely lad astray, and all Darby's had was good, ripe ale and two earsful o' sea-gossip as'll give him things to dream o' for nights to come. I shouldn't oughter o' let him come back, sir, but when he stuck that red mop o' his in the door an hour past I hadn't the heart to send him away. He's come to no harm, so you won't hold it against him for a extry mug or two of ale; will you, sir?"
"I did not come after him," I answered; "but as I am here he had best return home with me. Where did you get my name, Silver?"