"'Tis no matter for ladies' soft hands to dabble in."
"Then there has been fighting?" she asked.
I could stand it no longer.
"Fighting!" I snapped. "Aye, if you call assassination fighting. An attack in the dark upon an unarmed man, throwing him overboard to drown as you might a blind puppy, never a chance for his life!"
"Yet you are here, sir?" she said quietly.
"'Tis only by the intervention of Providence that I was saved—or the untidiness of our captain, who left a rope trailing over the side."
I grew sarcastic.
"You were pleased to say today that it was proof of a God in heaven that I had suffered misfortune. Sure, will you deny that the same God hath protected me against your father's——"
"My father!" she repeated questioningly.
"Well, what is he!" I returned cuttingly. "Mayhap you have some pet name for a parent who practises assassination."