“It is a little mad, perhaps, but I’m going to do it. I intend you to take the place of the king to-morrow evening long enough for this coachman to mistake you for him. I shall then take your place, the instant no one is looking, and I’m going to let these men abduct me. It will be much easier for them than if they got hold of the genuine article.”
“Wouldn’t it be much simpler and shorter to put a bullet in your head yourself?” he asked grimly. “You’ll find one get there all right when they know.”
“Not a bit of it. You forget the ‘divinity that doth hedge a king.’ These men are not assassins. They made that plain; nor are they accustomed to handle kings every day. They’ll be so excited over the business that they’ll be as nervous about ill-treating him as an old maid about her lap dog. They’re officers, mind, and what we term gentlemen; and they’ll be so scared to death lest the thing is going to fail, that they won’t want me to have so much as a peep at their faces until I’m safe on the Rampallo and locked up in the cabin which, as I heard, is already in readiness for my reception. If you turn the thing over, you’ll see that if I had laid the plan myself, it could not have suited me better;” and I ran over it again in detail.
“When we first leave the shed you’ll be king, and Bryant—I shall use Bryant because he’s a cool hand—and I will be in attendance on your Majesty. You’ll be recognized at once as the king—half Lisbon would mistake you for him at close grips even, and these fellows will be expecting you—we shall walk about ten yards and then stop while we are supposed to be asking you to excuse us; and we shan’t move on until the carriage has backed out of sight. I shall then take your place—I shall pad myself out, you know, and make up—and shall walk on alone straight into the trap.”
“But why you? I could put up a bigger fight than you.”
“There’s no fight to be put up at all, Jack.”
“You mean to let them carry you off to Oporto? You may find yourself in a tighter corner there than you reckon.”
“But I’m not going to Oporto. It’s 180 miles or thereabouts and, with an amateur crew, the Rampallo under the best circumstances wouldn’t make more than twelve to fifteen knots; the Stella would steam round her, and from the moment these beggars shove their yacht’s nose out of the harbour, you’ll keep almost within hailing distance. That’s where I want you. They’ll shut me into the cabin and as soon as it’s daylight I’ll hang a handkerchief or a pillow-case or something out of the porthole, and you’ll make trouble for my hosts.”
“Of course they’ll stop directly and say ‘thank you, sir,’ and go down on their knees and ask me to come on board and kick ’em,” he gibed with a heave of his big shoulders.
“It doesn’t matter what they say, it’s what you’ll do, Jack. Haven’t we got a couple of guns? And couldn’t you give the thing a pretty loud advertisement? And do you think they’ll relish to have you firing a royal salute within a league or so of the shore? And can’t we get some cartridges that aren’t blank in the city to-morrow? And would they enjoy their breakfast nicely if you sent a shot into the Rampallo’s hull? Or couldn’t the old man run the Stella alongside in the old grappling-iron style?”