For the first few minutes, as I recall it, we merely bickered at each other, snarling like a fair of unfriendly dogs. Then some shrewd, dry, verbal slap of his jarred a laugh loose in me; after which we got on better.
“I want no truck with ye, nor with any of your kind, Captain,” he warned me, when the ice was broken, “but I was told to come and find ye, and so I have. You’re from Virginia, and they tell me that ye have no schoolmasters in those parts: would it be too much to wonder if ye could read a smitch o’ writing?”
“Give me the letter,” I said, ignoring the gibe and knowing now that he was somebody’s messenger.
The missive was from Beatrix, and it voiced—somewhat formally, lest the letter should fall into the wrong hands—a plaintive little call for help. It ran:
“Dear Captain Page: We are in deep trouble, and since none of our friends can help us, we turn to our enemies. The bearer of this is the captain of the ship we had chartered to take us home. He tells us now that he is required to hold his vessel at the disposal of Major Simcoe, of the Queen’s Rangers, for transport service in the expedition soon to sail, and, for reasons sufficiently known to you, we are in despair. What do you suggest?”
I turned to the crabbed mariner.
“You are Captain Sprigg, of the Nancy Jane?” I asked.
“I’m nobody, of nothing,” he answered. Then he began spitefully to accuse Beatrix of bad faith. “It’s an ill thing to trust a woman: she promised me there should be no naming of names, and—”
I crossed over to where he stood and chucked him under the chin to make him hold up his head and pay attention.
“One word derogatory to the good name, the birth, breeding, beauty or discretion of that lady, Captain Sprigg, and I shave off your ears, and split your nose, and otherwise improve your personal appearance till your own cabin-boy won’t know you. The lady wrote no names in her letter—having given you her word that she wouldn’t.”