"You have letters for me, Captain Farraday?" he asked.
"Aye, indeed, sir—from Master Allen, your agent in London. I was on my way to deliver 'em. And a goodly store of strouds, axes, knives, beads, tools, flints and other trade-goods to your account."
"I will accept the letters at your hands, and even save you the trip to Pearl Street, captain," replied my father. "My son, Robert, here, will visit you aboardship in the morning and take measures to arrange for transshipping your cargo."
"I ha' no quarrel with such terms," rejoined Captain Farraday, fishing a silken-wrapped packet from his coat-tail pocket. "Here you are, Master Ormerod. And I'll be off to the George Tavern for a bite of shore food and a mug of mulled ale."
My father fidgeted the packet in his hands for a moment.
"You are certain 'twas Captain Rip-Rap who chased you?" he asked then.
"I'd swear to his foretops'ls," answered Farraday confidently. "Mark you, my master, when I first sighted him I made sure he was a King's ship, and I lay to until he was abeam. Then I saw he showed no colors—and moreover, there was that about him, which I'll own I can not put a name to, made me suspicious. So I hoisted colors. And still he showed none. I fired a gun, and wi' that he bore up for me, and I made off, wi' every sail set; aye, until the sticks groaned. For I knew he was up to no good purpose, and I made certain that he was Rip-Rap.
"As I said afore, he chased me once in '43, and Jenkins he took off Jamaica in the snow Cynthia out o' Southampton, when Flint was for drowning the lot o' them; but Rip-Rap, in his cold way, says there was no point to slaying without purpose, and they turned 'em loose in the longboat. And there's none left 'on the Account' that sail in a great ship fit to be a King's frigate, save it be Rip-Rap—Flint's Walrus is a tall ship and heavy armed, but hath not the sail-spread o' the Royal James. Jenkins says she was a Frenchman, and 'tis to be admitted she hath the fine-run lines the Frenchies build."
My father was hard put to it to make head against this flow of talk, but at last he succeeded.
"It was my understanding," he said, "that Captain Rip-Rap disappeared from the West Indies during the late war."