THE GUNNER
Aye, missus—his honor, Captain Deuteronomy Bimbo, Esquire, commodore of all the high seas of the world and president of our company of one hunder’ and seventy-one free gen’lemen rovers and brave seamen!
ROBERT (groaning)
Bimbo? Is it the pirate Bimbo that’s taken us?
THE GUNNER (astonished)
Why, if you’re the seafarin’ body ye look to be I should think ye’d know it. Who but Bimbo and his company could have took a ship as neat as we took yours? Bimbo? I should say it is Bimbo!
ROBERT (despairingly)
Bimbo!
LYDIA
Is he worse than other pirates, Robert?
ROBERT
We’re under the tiger’s claw, Lydia.
THE GUNNER (contemptuously)
You talk like an ignorant man. (Going to the windows at the right, he begins to set back the curtains, letting in a rosy light.) Sunrise is on the way; I’ll just give ye some light to see the “tiger” by, lad! (He crosses and opens the other curtains, talking as he does so.) And look that ye speak him respectful. It’s not every common mate of a merchant vessel he honors with his converse. Tiger, ye might find him, if ye scratch him.
LYDIA (faltering)
Have they—have they murdered—my father—yet?
THE GUNNER
Which would he be now? Is it a fat old Lunnon merchantlike man in a brindle wig and gold buckles to his shoon?
LYDIA
Yes. Have they——