"I'm glad you've come," he explained, with a sour smile that was meant to be pleasant. "Your mate is oversuspicious. He refuses to allow me on board."
"Quite right, too," growled Barry, openly glaring his dislike for Leyden. "My orders. I expect them to be carried out. You can have no business with my ship, anyhow."
"You're not very cordial, are you?" Leyden smiled back. "I wanted to inquire about one of my men who ran from me in Surabaya. I believe he joined you. My skipper said a brigantine came in for an hour or so about the time the man disappeared, and this is the only brigantine that's been in the port in months."
Barry's keen eyes bored into Leyden so coldly and fixedly that, studied as he was in worldly encounters, that gentleman shifted uneasily on his feet. The Barang's skipper knew well enough about that missing man, and also where he had gone to. He knew, also, that it was not in Surabaya that he entered the brigantine, but in far subtler manner, as a legitimate, signed-on seaman in Batavia. There was still a patch in the mainsail, a little more than man-high, to recall the man; somewhere near the stockade gate the insects and ground vermin were at that moment industriously engaged in stripping a skeleton which might have interested Leyden. But the blunt sailor, simple and straightforward though he was, was endowed with sufficient elementary cunning to cope with Leyden in that worthy's present state of irritation.
"No strangers in my ship, Mr. Leyden," he said. "Try another tack. Sorry I can't stay to talk with you; I'm busy." He mounted the gangway without a further glance at Leyden, leaving that gentleman staring up after him with tight lips drawn back from grinning teeth and a quivering of the arm which was bent back to the hip pocket.
"Don't try it!" warned Rolfe, edging aside as Barry passed him.
"Shove orf, me son," added Bill Blunt and squinted along his belaying pin straight at Leyden.
"Oh, leave the man alone!" growled Barry angrily. "You weren't put here to start something. So long as he stays off the ship, I don't expect you to stir him up."
"Barry, just one moment," cried Leyden, and his face had assumed a smirk of contempt. Barry turned without replying. "I'd be thankful if you'd tell your pirates to leave this theatrical stuff until it's called for," Leyden laughed. "I've been trying for five minutes to get my tobacco pouch out of my pocket, and every time I move a finger one of your bold desperadoes wiggles a gun at me, and the other buccaneer draws a bead on my unoffending head with that ferocious pin."