“I can pull an oar,” said the stranger.
“I guess he can pull enough to break your back, young man,” said the captain. “He’s an American citizen, and he’s been engaged in whipping your British army. I guess an American citizen can lick a darned aristocrat at pulling an oar same as he did at shooting off guns.”
“Shut your damned mouth,” said Maurice, suddenly angry, “or I’ll leave you to land your passenger yourself and see how you like beating the bottom out of your brig against our rocks. You’ll find an Irish rock harder than your Yankee wood.”
The passenger fetched a small hand-bag and lowered it into the boat. Under a shower of jibes from the captain, Maurice and Neal pushed off and started for the row home against the wind.
CHAPTER II
The passenger took his seat in the bow of the boat and stripped off his coat in readiness to pull an oar. But no oar was offered to him. Maurice St. Clair seemed to have entirely forgotten the stranger’s presence. The remarks of the American captain had angered him, and his mind worked on the insults hurled at him in parting. Neal was angry, too. They pulled viciously at the oars. From time to time Maurice broke out fiercely—
“An unmannerly brute! I wish I had him somewhere off the deck of his brig. I’d teach him how to speak to a gentleman.
“Is that his filthy tobacco at your feet, Brown-Eyes? Pitch it overboard.
“I suppose he’s a specimen of the Republican breed. That’s what comes of liberty and equality and French Jacobinism and Tom Paine and the Rights of Man. Damned insolence I call it.”