"And there are others yet besides prating Puritans, mine friend, that drink our toast!" cried Jacob.
The Old One then smiled, for he was no man to drive a nail with a two-hand sledge. But although he changed his manner as fast and often as light flickers on running water, under the surface there flowed a strong, even current of liking or ill will, as sooner or later all men that had dealings with him must learn, some to their wonder and some to their sorrow. "Enough, enough!" said he. "Will's a good lad and he'll serve us well when there's powder smoke to snuff. Be you not offended, Will. In all faith our ship is a king's ship and more, for are we not thirty kings, to fight our own battles and heave out our own flag before the world and take such treasures as will buy us, each and all, a king's palace and all the wives a king could wish? Nay, God helping us, my hearts, we shall carry home to good Mother Taylor riches that will serve for a sponge to wipe the chalk from every black post in Cornwall and in Devon, and Will Canty shall drink with us there."
There rose a thunder of fists beating the board and a rumble of "Yea's," and the Old One made no end of smiling, but there were some whom his smile failed to deceive.
"Come, boy, with thy pitcher of sack! Pour sack for all!" he cried. "Come, ply thy task and let no man go wanting. Fill you Will Canty's pot." He gulped down a mighty draught and wiped his moustaches with thumb and forefinger. "And now, brave lads, let us have our heads together: though we lie but a hundred leagues off these banks of Newfoundland, what say you? Shall we turn our backs on them and take a fling at a braver trade? Or shall we taste of fat lobsters and great cod, and perchance pluck the feathers from some of these New England towns concerning which there hath lately been such a buzz of talk in old England—at Cape Ann, let us say at venture, or Naumkeag, or Plymouth Colony?"
"Yea, yea! I am for Cape Ann," cried Joe Kirk, and his head rolled drunkenly above his great shoulders as he bolstered his opinion with curses. "Did not my brother go thither, years and years agone, for the company of Dorchester merchants? Yea, and told rare tales of succulent great fish, which are a marvelous diet."
"Nay, thy brother was as great a sot as thou," a voice put in, and Joe rose in anger, but a general clamour drowned his retort and he lapsed back into a sodden lethargy.
"As for me," bellowed Martin with bluster and bravado, "I say go we to Plymouth and rap the horns of these schismatic Puritans. Tell me not but that they've mines of rich gold hid away. Did'st ever see a Roundhead knave would brave the wild lions of America unless he thought there was gold in't?"
"Thou thyself art fool as well as knave," quoth the Old One. "Did'st thou not once cry the whole ship's company out of sleep to see a mermaid that would entice thee to thy peril? And when sober men had come on deck there was nought there but a seal-fish at play. Lions forsooth! In Africa even I have heard a lion roar, but not in America. Much searching of tracts hath stuffed thy head."
The drunken Joe roused sleepily up. "My brother saw a lion at Cape Ann plantation. My brother—" He drew a knife and wildly flourished it, but fell back in a stupor before the laughter died.
Martin's bluster, as was its way when a man boldly confronted it, broke like a pricked bubble, but his sullen glare caught the Old One's eye.