The Governor wagged his goblet slowly. "Neither one nor the other," said he. "Alphonse," he cried, raising his voice, "haul across that curtain."
There was a scuffle of feet. A piece of drapery that seemed to hide the wall behind the Prince's chair clattered back on its rings, and showed another room, long, narrow, and dusky. In it at the farther end was a demi-bombarde, a small wide-mouthed piece on a gun carriage, with a man standing beside its breech holding a lighted match over the touch-hole.
The Prince turned sharply to look, and then slewed round to the table again. "It covers me well, but I have known a single shot to miss."
"But not a bag of musket balls, mon prince, with a small charge behind them," said the Frenchman politely.
"They would be safer," said Rupert. "Yes, Monsieur, it is a pretty trap, but to me it scarcely seems one that a gentleman would set for a guest."
D'Ogeron shrugged his shoulders. "It contents me," he said, reaching for the black-jack. "I have ceased to be a gentleman. I am Governor of Tortuga."
"If I cannot compel you just now to fight me for your discourtesy," said Rupert, "at least I will not drink with you." And he spilled his liquor on the floor.
"Every man to his humour," said D'Ogeron. "The jack's half full yet, but I'm not averse to doing double duty. This sangoree puts heart in a man. Now touching these engagés we started from: there is a way open by which you can serve them quite to their fancy. All who are left, that is, for I make no doubt that some have not survived. Newcomers are apt to be full of vexatious faults, and the cow-killers are not wont to be lenient when their convenience is injured. Give out that you are here with money, and ready to buy, and within a month I'll have all of them brought here to look at, with their prices written in plain figures. Say the word, mon prince, and I'll send out news this very day."
It irked Prince Rupert to deal with this man, it irked him to sit in the same room with such a fellow; but the woes of those that had fought by his side cried aloud for relief, so he swallowed back his nausea and spoke him civilly. Besides, if the Governor chose to pocket the affronts and go on sipping his sangoree, it was the Governor's affair. So the Prince said that he was ready to buy back the liberty of those officers who had served his late majesty King Charles in the wars, and was prepared to remain in Tortuga harbour with his three ships till these were brought in.
"Well and good," said D'Ogeron. "But I must warn your Highness that prices will rule high. When your very excellent friends were sold here, newly out of the ship, being raw with wounds, and galled with their shackles, and damaged with scurvy, they went cheap. But since then they have been in training as hunters, and porters of meat, and makers of bucan, and dressers of hide, and so they have acquired value as handicraftsmen. Moreover, when ransom is spoken of, it is always our custom to acquire new interest in a prisoner. You take me?"