"Lean enough, I fear, but I have no wish that it should endure longer than is absolutely needful. As a buccaneer, sir, you are my senior, and I bow to your experience, but as a mere soldier, I should say that the strategy indicated is to go to the nearest place where provisions are stored whether it is afloat or ashore, and procure them in the handiest way which occurs to us."
Captain Wick slapped his thigh. "Well," he said, "this is the maddest turn-out! You've neither meat, wood, nor water; you've a little old ship that leaks like a fishing net; you've no force——"
"Ah, pardon me there, sir. You see before you two very good swords, who would be quite pleased to parade themselves against any other two you can put against them."
"Give it if you like, you've an army of two, yourself and this slim youngster here. You must have left a very ugly place behind you to have sailed out so blithely into this fix."
"In honest truth we did. But being here, sir, and having you and your excellent friends as companions, I repeat that the shrewdest thing at present seems to me that we should sail with as much canvas as we can carry towards the nearest meal. Come, Captain Wick, I'm still but raw in these seas, and you are likely to know far more where the good things are stowed. What do you say? Are we to get ashore and hunt bullocks? Or is there some convenient town to sack, or some castle to ransom? Or can you guarantee that we shall find a Spaniard on the sea, and get our next dinner from him before we are absolutely starving?"
Captain Wick leaned up against the bulwarks and laughed. "This is like the old hard, wicked times once more, when buccaneers sailed cheerfully against an armada in a canoe—and sometimes took it. It gives me a thrill to be desperate again. I oughtn't to be merry, I know, but spit me if I can help it. I've lost my ship, I've been robbed of my lawful plundery, I'm out of the frying-pan into the fishing-net, but by the Lord, there's something too humorous about the whole adventure to let one work up a proper pitch of anger."—His face sobered with a sudden pucker of recollection.—"Rupert," he repeated, "Captain Rupert. Isn't it Prince Rupert I should have said?"
"So I am more usually known."
Captain Wick changed his manner. He lugged off his feathered hat and made a great bow. "My lord," he said, "you must excuse these manners I've been showing you. At first I thought you were a rogue, and then I thought you were a madman, and then I judged you were a fool, but I never guessed you were a born prince and there's the truth of it. I was only a common seaman before the mast before I drifted out to these seas of the New World, and earned distinction, and so at home I was not in a position to meet Princes, and here there are none to come across. But believe me, my lord, it gives me great pleasure now to make your acquaintance, and devil take the expense. Indeed I don't grudge the expense: Princes out here will want to make their bit like other men."
The secretary, who stood near, looked for an explosion of his Highness' anger, for there were times when Prince Rupert could defend his dignity with great niceness and punctilio. For it was in Master Laughan's mind that this Wick was merely mocking her patron, since of all these rude buccaneers they had come across so far in the New World, they had not met one who showed a particle of reverence for a great name and exalted birth for their own sakes. But Prince Rupert, with his usual fine discernment, saw otherwise; indeed he understood in a flash that the man was dazzled at finding himself the guest of one who carried so illustrious a name: and he showed him some very pretty and graceful condescensions.
The secretary, being by this time so thoroughly wearied out that her eyes would keep open no longer, heard dully the rumble of their talk for awhile, and then dropped off to sleep where she was on the bare deck, but not before a new course had been set, and sharp orders given for the re-trimming of tacks and sheets. The buccaneers, it appears, would have waked her to take a spell at the baling, being rude brutal fellows with but little sympathy for gentility and a slim figure; but the Prince so pleasantly asked them to desist, at the same time speaking so handsomely of the secretary's youth and previous labours, that of their uncouth condescension Stephen was permitted to further enjoy plank bed undisturbed.