“Have you money?” he questioned—“for London, not for me,” he added, hastily.
“Enough,” she replied.
“The trust with the money is a weighty matter,” he added; “but they suffice not. You must have ’fending.”
“There is no one,” she answered, sadly, “no one save—”
“Save the Seigneur of Rozel!” Buonespoir finished the sentence. “Good. You to your father and I to the seigneur. If you can fetch your father by your pot-of-honey tongue, I’ll fetch the great Lemprière with muscadella. Is’t a bargain?”
“In which I gain all,” she answered, and again touched his arm with her finger-tips.
“You shall be aboard here at ten, and I will join you on the stroke of twelve,” he said, and gave a low whistle.
At the signal three men sprang up like magic out of the bowels of the boat beneath them, and scurried over the side; three as ripe knaves as ever cheated stocks and gallows, but simple knaves, unlike their master. Two of them had served with Francis Drake in that good ship of his lying even now not far from Elizabeth’s palace at Greenwich. The third was a rogue who had been banished from Jersey for an habitual drunkenness which only attacked him on land—at sea he was sacredly sober. His name was Jean Nicolle. The names of the other two were Hervé Robin and Rouge le Riche, but their master called them by other names.
“Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,” said Buonespoir, in ceremony, and waved a hand of homage between them and Angèle. “Kiss dirt, and know where duty lies. The lady’s word on my ship is law till we anchor at the Queen’s Stairs at Greenwich. So, Heaven help you, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!” said Buonespoir.