“Silence, Rodney!”
“I can’t be silent, uncle. I won’t stand here and listen to such an outrageous charge against those two gentlemen. I don’t know what has come to Captain Chubb, but he ought to be made to apologise before he leaves this place.”
“Well, he aren’t going to be made to, young pepper-caster,” growled the captain. “Honest men don’t apologise for telling the truth, even if it don’t taste nice.”
“Look here, Chubb,” said the doctor, “we are having too many words. Let’s have a clear understanding about what you think.”
“Right, sir. Let’s get to the bottom of it at once. You want an explanation. It’s this now. I have been very suspicious from the first. What about this ’ere Count and his son? First you knowed of ’em was as they was prisoners at Dartmoor. Well, it sounds bad for a man to be a prisoner, but as he was took in war that don’t count for much, so we’ll let that go. Next thing is, you runs agen ’em at Havre, cutting their cable and running for it when Government gives orders for them to stop. Next thing is, they boards our schooner like a set of pirates, only we seem too many for them; and then they cackles up a cock-and-bull story about wanting help, when they see they couldn’t seize the schooner.”
“Look here, Captain Chubb—” began the doctor.
“Give me my chance, sir, and let me finish, and then have your say. Help they had, and plenty on it, and I will say that a nicer, more gentlemanly-tongued chap than the Count I never met, nor had to do with a pleasanter nor nicer young fellow than his son.”
“Thank you,” said Rodd sarcastically.
“Now, don’t you sneer, youngster,” growled the captain, “for it aren’t clever, nor it aren’t nice. Well, now, doctor, we all went through a deal all along of these Frenchies, for I don’t see how it could have happened if it hadn’t been for them.”
“Why, you took us up the river, captain,” cried Rodd indignantly.