“Ods rabbit it! What matters the eyes?” sang out the burly giant, Robin Cursemother, as he dealt a sounding blow on the head of the bolt he was driving in. “There’s but one pair to signify, and we mean to close them, don’t we, lads, so as they shan’t see naught to hurt no more!”
Then up spoke a third man, who was seated on a barrel in a corner, with a pipe between his lips, and holding a torch in one hand. He limped when he moved, and Tregenna guessed that this was the “Gardener Tom” whom he had himself wounded, and whom the parson and his daughter had sheltered under their roof. He was a young fellow of not more than five or six and twenty, well made and handsome, with an open, honest face and manly voice: a man too good for a smuggler, Tregenna decided.
“Nay, the young officer does but his duty in running us down. And I don’t want to see no harm come to him, though ’twas he shot me through the leg. So we can but keep clear of him,’tis all I want. Miss Joan ’ud be main sorry any harm should come to him; and for her sake I’d have no hand in doing him a hurt.”
“Zoons, then we’ll do without thee, Tom, when we give the lubber his deserts!” said Robin. “Though what you should want to spare him for I know not, since you’re sweet on Ann; and ’tis ten chances to one she’ll turn sheep’s eyes upon him if we don’t settle his business while she’s hot against him, as she is now.”
“Ay, Tom,” said the mean-looking Bill, coming close up to him, and sniggering in his face, “you’ve already got Ben to settle with; you don’t want no more rivals, my lad. You’d best let us do her bidding, and carry him off and let him down the monks’ well, when he shows his nose up here again!”
“I won’t have no hand in it, mates,” said Tom, stubbornly. “I don’t mind a fight, man to man; I like it when my blood’s up. But to land a man over the head when he’s alone, and to bind him when he’s dazed and can’t do naught to defend hisself, why, that’s no work for a man as is a man, and it ain’t no work for me.”
“Odso, man, we’ll do as well without thee!” retorted Robin, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a huge red hand.
“Ay, and better too!” piped out Bill. “For there’ll be one less to share the plunder; and——”
He was interrupted by a roar of mocking laughter from all the men within hearing.
“Ay, that’s Bill Plunder, true to’s name!” cried one. “Never no blows gets struck but what he’s thinking whether there’s guineas to come out of it, or but a matter of shillings! But there’ll be cursed little to take from a fellow that’s but a lieutenant!”