"More for you, mon prince, than for me. They are Pope's men, and I was a Pope's man bred myself. You were always Protestant."
"I glory in it," said Rupert fervently, "though it has made me a ruined fellow from my birth up."
"There you are, then," said the Governor. "Take your revenge, which is here ready to your hand, and grow rich at one and the same time."
"I shall take my revenge," said the Prince quietly, "and I shall take revenge for others also. But it is my King who will have the riches."
"Yet, if it could be otherwise," said the Frenchman musingly: "if you would follow what is in the atmosphere out here, and be content to fight for your own hand, what a glorious future there would be before you! There are with you three ships in harbour now: a very tolerable commencement. You could take them up a creek to careen, and clean them from the weeds of the voyage, and re-set-up your rigging, and get all put a-tauto. You have pretty enough crews on board already. I can get you also those of your late soldiers whom Monsieur Cromwell sent me, and who will be none the worse for their short apprenticeship with the buccaneers. There are hundreds of the buccaneers themselves that would join in such an enterprise, and I also could lend a couple of well-found ships to assist it.
"And what is this enterprise?"
"Seize every plate ship that's sent home to Spain. Sack every city on the Main in its turn, squeeze out all the gold, and sail away and leave its people to spin more."
"You propose I should do this as your lieutenant?"
"That sticks in your gizzard, eh, mon prince? But, as it chanced, I was not going to make any such suggestion. I never aspire to having men of your calibre as my subjects. They would take too much looking after, and I have no wish to find one from below climbing up and trampling on me, and becoming chief in my place. This governorship has been too hard to get, and is too snug a property to jeopardise for the mere ambition of having Rupert Palatine for a mere week or so as my dutiful lieutenant." And Monsieur D'Ogeron winked pleasantly. "No, mon prince, go and seize an island for yourself, and set up a government, and we will call ourselves allies. We will form a buccaneer kingdom with a dual head, and there will be no limit to our prosperity. Look at the crop there is at hand: wine, women, meat, corn, silks, pearls and gold in all abundance. All the strong men will flock to us and help in the taking. The Spanish power will melt away like sand cliffs before a sea."
Prince Rupert thrust back his chair from the table and smote the arm with his fist. "Have done, Monsieur!" he said. "It is against my honour that I should listen to you more. I came out here as a King's man, and if life remains to me, it will be as his man that I go back."