He hesitated.
"Silver will be nursing some hidden plan," supplemented Moira.
"Ja," he said. "How didt you know?"
"I guessed," she said. "Glory, I will have been listening behind ye this quarter-glass, for I had a feeling in me there was new wickedness astir. But here's Darby, and for his sake we'd best be going quickly."
Darby fronted us with a gulp.
"Silver bade me——"
Moira slipped between Peter and me and dropped her hand on his shoulder.
"Don't ye be taking heed to what they say," she comforted him. "Faith, 'tis you are the grand knight, Darby lad, and I am that proud o' ye I could be giving ye a bit of a kerchief or gaudy ribbon to wear in your hat—only that ye will have no hat and me neither ribbon nor kerchief! But let's be after trying what the rogues want with us."
And out she marched at the boy's side before one or the other of us could step ahead.
The ranks of pirates parted to admit our procession, and we threaded the shadows to the edge of the central pool of light where Silver leaned upon his crutch. He moved aside to make room for us, and I found myself at his right hand. Perhaps fifteen feet away Bones sat on his barrel, his coarse face flushed and shiny, his cruel eyes devouring Moira's lissome grace. The scores of others were just so many vague blurs to me, but Moira frowned about her with a kind of high pride that turned the boldest stare. Peter looked stolidly over the heads of the throng. It was his way when he fronted danger; behind their mask of fat his little eyes were darting daggerwise from face to face, probing, guessing, estimating.