"I am the lad you'll not get," I shouted. "Call in your bravos, and I'll tear their throats out for you."
"Gently, gently," he remonstrated. "My bravos, as you term them, are not lambs, Nephew Robert, and I must warn you that the killings would not be all on the one side. If you value your father, stand fast."
And he drew from a waistcoat pocket a silver whistle, which he placed to his lips. A thin blast piped through the room, and a dozen hairy seadogs surged in from hall and kitchen. Raps on the two windows indicated that others mounted guard outside.
Peter Corlaer's little pig-eyes swept the invaders with a single glance, but he did not suspend for a second his steady crushing and munching of nuts. My father's face was a mask of mingled rage and fear—not fear for himself, but for me. He stared at the savage figures, the bared cutlasses, the ready pistols, almost with unbelief in the reality of his vision. And certes 'twas a weird spectacle in that orderly house in the town we of the province looked upon as the most advanced in the colonies—and became to me the more weird as I glimpsed next the hall door a grim mahogany face and a hangman look beneath a skrim of black hair, and behind the two a familiar carroty head.
"Ho, there, Darby!" I called out. "What are you doing in such company? Did you know those men for pirates, when you drank with them at the Whale's Head?"
"Sure, they ha' taken me into their crew," he answered brazenly.
"Have you turned pirate, Darby?" says my father, seeing him for the first time.
"Oh, aye," said Darby with a swagger. "I'm as cruel wicked as any."
"And 'twas you let them into the house and betrayed your master!" returned my father sadly. "I had not expected this of you, Darby. Have we not been kind to you?"
Darby wiggled uncomfortably.