“Ah, yes! The schooner. She was quite destroyed, was she not?”
“Divil a bit, sor. Your boys didn’t shoot straight enough. The ship ye came in was, afther we’d got all we wanted out of her. She was burnt to the wather’s edge, and then she sank off the reef.”
Humphrey groaned.
“Ye needn’t do that, sor, for she was a very owld boat, and not safe for a journey home. Mak’ yer mind aisy, and mak’ this yer home. There’s plinty of room for ye, and—whisht! here’s the captain coming. What’ll he be doing here?”
“The captain!” cried Humphrey. “Then that man took my message.”
“What message, sor?”
At that moment the steps which had been heard coming as it were down some long stone corridor halted at the doorway of the prisoner’s chamber, someone drew aside a heavy rug, and the buccaneer, wearing a broad-leafed hat which shaded his face, entered the place.
“You can go, Dinny.”
“Yis, sor, I’m going,” said Dinny, obsequiously; and, after a glance at the prisoner, he hurriedly obeyed.
There was only a gloomy greenish twilight in the old chamber, such light as there was striking in through the forest-shaded window, and with his back to this, and retaining his hat, the captain seated himself upon a rug covered chest.