Francis bent his sharp eyes on his companion, but did not take up the challenge; indeed, a less discreet lad than he might have considered an instant before coming to fisticuffs with Miles Rigdale. The boy, for his scant eleven years, was of a proper height, with straight back and sturdy limbs, a stocky, yet not clumsy, little figure, that promised a vigorous stature when he came to man's age. His deeply tanned face, that was lightly sprinkled with brown freckles, was square and resolute; his blue eyes were very level and honest; and his tousled brown hair tumbled about his forehead in a way to make more women than his mother think him a bonny boy. For the rest, he was clad humbly enough in doublet and breeches of dark gray frieze, with long gray stockings and stout shoes; he wore neither cloak nor hat, and his clenched fists, that now rested firmly on the bulwark, were bare and chapped red by the wind.
It was the sight of the aggressive fists that made Francis use a different tone: "You're a pretty comrade, Miles, to fly out at me so."
"You may leave my father in peace, then."
"Perhaps you'd wish me to leave you in peace too. I know Goodman Rigdale has forbid his little son speak to me."
"I'm still speaking to you, am I not?" answered Miles, and bent to adjust one of his shoes, so Francis could not see his face; those last words had hit dangerously near.
"But you'll show me a clean pair of heels very speedily," sneered his companion, "for yonder the boat with your good father is putting off from shore, and when he comes—"
"That's how the wind blows, is it?" struck in a new voice close at hand. Looking over his shoulder, Miles saw, lounging on a coil of rope by the foremast, a certain Edward Lister, one of the servants of Master Stephen Hopkins. He was a slim, dark fellow of some twenty years, whom Miles admired for a tall swaggerer, because he always wore his red cap rakishly on one side, and, since the rules about lighting tobacco aboard ship were strict, was ever chewing at a long pine splinter instead of a pipe. "So if your father catch you with Master Billington here, he'll swinge you soundly, eh, Miles Rigdale?" he asked, with his mouth quite grave, but a glancing mockery in his black eyes. "Better show us how briskly you can run into the cabin."
Miles ostentatiously leaned his shoulders against the bulwark and crossed one leg over the other, as if he thought to finish the afternoon in that position. Shifting round thus, his gaze travelled beyond his companions to the high quarter-deck, where he spied several men trudging forth from the roundhouse. "Has the conference broken off?" he asked, forgetting in his curiosity that he was angry with both Francis and Ned Lister.
"How else?" the latter answered dryly, and, rising to his feet, sauntered over to the two boys. "D'ye think they would confer without the great Master Hopkins? And he quit the roundhouse long since. Wearied out, doubtless, with such vigorous labor. It has taken them an hour to determine no more than to send forth a gang to-morrow and try a third time for a place where we may settle."
"Another exploration? Is my father to go on it, do you know?" Miles questioned.