'Heaven! are you mad? Is all our security to be the grant by Heaven of a miracle?'
'First, sir, I will tell you that we are like enough to be unharried; for it cannot be in mortal reckoning that we should dare here, since this place is a death-trap to be given wide berth in winter gales.'
'The very place to seek men fugitive and desperate.'
'By your leave, sir, I came into this venture as a volunteer, and not from desperation.
'The special danger of these coasts you do not know. Our winter storms, sudden and fierce, strike here at their hardest. Learned men say that high ranges leagues off over sea make a funnel to set them here. We fishers have another way of thinking—no matter what. But 'tis wide known that there is no record of any boat caught in a winter burst within sound of these breakers living to boast of it.'
'Is, then, the favour of Heaven also to be engaged to preserve from storm as from chase?'
Philip, tongue and throat, was dry, and he drank again deeply.
'You tell me of risks that I cannot bring myself to believe a volunteer would engage; not though, as I hear, he doubled his price.'
Wine and resentment mounted a flush.
'You do ill, sir, to fleer at a man who for your service risks freedom, life—ay, more than life—but that you would not believe; for you laughed, under night even, you laughed!'