"We be men peaceably inclined at all times," replied Tuchet, closing his eyes altogether, "and I should be sorry if resistance to our demands led to bloodshed."
"But my uncle..." I said and hesitated.
"Is a reasonable villain by all accounts," replied the Captain, and so for that while dismissed me.
The news that we were to alter our course in order to the end I have named, soon spread amongst the crew, who one and all rejoiced at the prospect of fighting it offered them; that being a luxury not often to be indulged in upon a merchant ship and therefore the more highly prized. From the mate I learned that there was an infinite number of such secret nooks and fastnesses by pirates and desperate thieves infested, in this sea, and that to any ordinary man it would appear an absurd thing to attempt, from amongst so many, to discover the particular refuge that Spurrier might affect. "So that were it not for some hint we have to go upon, which our Captain thinks sufficient, we might indeed run far astray; though now, if we do, I shall greatly admire it."
"Upon what place hath he fixed as likely?" I asked.
"'Tis a little rock among the Æolian Islands," he answered me, "for it is indeed hardly more than a bare rock. The people name it the Three Towers, because of certain watch-towers formerly set up against the Saracens and yet remaining: as you may see them likewise in Amalfi, and other places too. It hath a fair anchorage and haven and a flat strip of good land where they used to cultivate vines before the robbers took the place and killed the islanders. There was a pleasant village there among the vineyards, and a temple, nigh perfect, of the old heathen gods. But now all is in ruins, except that those men have retained for their safeguard, or for the storage of their treasure."
"You seem to know their lurking-place pretty well," said I, with a smile.
He let the jest pass, it being none to him as I soon learned.
"I should know it, master," he replied, "having lived there, and there married and had children. 'Twas those devils of pirates drove me forth ... but not my wife. My children they slew in the room where the wine-press stood. I think if we fall in with that company, sir, by how much soever their number exceed ours, we shall yet get the better of them, God helping us."
All that day we held our course eastward, with a pretty strong wind following, so that we had got about seventy or eighty miles from the port by sunset. The night also continuing fair, with lucky weather, we made a further good progress, by which the Captain hoped, within two or three days at the most, we should make the Island of Tre Torre (that is, the Three Towers aforesaid), and therefore set every one to the preparing of his weapon, and the hauling up of the powder from the magazine.