Prince Rupert sat biting his nails in bitter anger. He knew well the dispositions of the Governor of Tortuga's audience-room from previous humiliating experience. Behind one curtain stood a demi-bombarde, with a gunner and a lighted lintstock beside it, which could blow him to pieces at a word. Behind another curtain was another rogue, holding strings that governed those traps in the flooring which shot Monsieur D'Ogeron's unwelcome visitors into the dungeons beneath. And for aught the Prince knew, there might be other monkey pranks in readiness equally nasty. To be beaten by anyone was bad enough, but to be beaten by a creature of the low, dishonourable cunning of this Monsieur de Tortuga was past a gentleman's endurance. And so Rupert bit his nails through helpless rage.
The Governor lay back in his chair, watching the fumes from his tobacco pipe as they drifted towards the beams above, but withal keeping the tail of one eye warily upon the Prince. He was a man well-used to danger, and he plumed himself that he knew where danger lay, and by forethought was amply secured against it. But he had all his mind for the Prince, and not so much as a thought for the secretary, and indeed openly sneered at the poor creature for her slim figure and (what he was pleased to term) mincing, finicking ways. Indeed, if the bare truth be told, it was as much resentment at this contemptuous neglect (and to show the brute that she could be as dangerous as any man) that the poor secretary made the move that cut the Gordian knot of the situation. For by a sudden leap she stood behind Monsieur D'Ogeron's chair, pressing her poniard down upon his left shoulder.
She cried out that she would assuredly drive the weapon down into his heart if he moved, or if any of those who watched round the room so much as stirred, and of a truth would have murdered him there in sheer self-defence if he had disobeyed, though the mere thought of doing it turned her sick.
Rupert, with his quick appreciation of events, sat himself suddenly on the table (knowing the instability of the floor), and the frowns on his face changed to merry laughter. "Bravo, Stephen, lad," cried he. "Strike home if there's any discourtesy shown you. And now, Monsieur D'Ogeron, our diplomacy has come down to a plane where you may find yourself more amenable to reason."
The Governor smoked on unmoved. A curtain at one side of the room whisked across and showed a gunner, lighted match in hand, standing over the touch-hole of his piece. Another curtain moved away, and there was the man who commanded the strings of the traps of the floor, and behind him a dozen uncombed fellows, each with pistols and hanger.
"We seem at a deadlock," said the Governor, with a wave of his pipe-stem.
"As for the lock, that's to be proved, Monsieur," said Master Laughan from behind him; "but as for being dead, why, there you will take precedence of all in this chamber when action begins." And in emphasis she twisted the poniard so that it might prick the Governor's shoulder through his clothing.
The Governor reached slowly for his sangoree and drank it with an air. "Mon Prince," he said, "the needs of your gracious sovereign at The Hague really begin to touch my conscience. If so lowly a creature as myself might help with a mite, it would give me vast pleasure to become his banker to the extent of—well, I am in an open mood to-day—say anything up to ten thousand pieces-of-eight."
"It is strange," said Rupert, "but our wishes seem to jump the same way. In fact you could not have made a more pleasing suggestion, Monsieur, except that you made one small tongue-slip in the figures. Surely the sum you had in mind was fifty thousand?"
"You are quite right. I meant to have said twenty thousand, though it will leave my treasury dangerously bare."