“’Tis that same business brings me here,” said Buonespoir, and forthwith told of his meeting with Angèle and what was then agreed upon.
“You to go to England!” cried Lemprière, amazed. “They want you for Tyburn there.”
“They want me for the gallows here,” said Buonespoir. Rolling a piece of spiced meat in his hand, he stuffed it into his mouth and chewed till the grease came out of his eyes, and took eagerly from a servant a flagon of malmsey and a dish of ormers.
“Hush! chew thy tongue a minute,” said the seigneur, suddenly starting and laying a finger beside his nose. “Hush!” he said, again, and looked into the flicker of the candle by him with half-shut eyes.
“May I have no rushes for a bed, and die like a rat in a moat, if I don’t get thy pardon, too, of the Queen, and bring thee back to Jersey, a thorn in the side of De Carteret forever! He’ll look upon thee assoilzied by the Queen, spitting fire in his rage, and no canary or muscadella in his cellar.”
It came not to the mind of either that this expedition would be made at cost to themselves. They had not heard of Don Quixote, and their gifts were not imitative. They were of a day when men held their lives as lightly as many men hold their honor now, when championship was as the breath of life to men’s nostrils, and to adventure for what was worth having or doing in life the only road of reputation.
Buonespoir was as much a champion in his ways as Lemprière of Rozel. They were of like kidney, though so far apart in rank. Had Lemprière been born as low and as poor as Buonespoir, he would have been a pirate, too, no doubt; and had Buonespoir been born as high as the seigneur, he would have carried himself with the same rough sense of honor, with as ripe a vanity, have been as naïve, as sincere, as true to the real heart of man untaught in the dissimulation of modesty or reserve. When they shook hands across the trencher of spiced veal, it was as man shakes hand with man, not man with master.
They were about to start upon their journey when there came a knocking at the door. On its being opened the bald and toothless Abednego stumbled in with the word that immediately after Angèle and her father came aboard the Honeyflower some fifty halberdiers suddenly appeared upon the Couperon. They had at once set sail, and got away even before the sailors had reached the shore. As they had rounded the point, where they were hid from view, Abednego dropped overboard and swam ashore on the rising tide, making his way to the manor to warn Buonespoir. On his way hither, stealing through the trees, he had passed a half-score of halberdiers making for the manor, and he had seen others going towards the shore.
Buonespoir looked to the priming of his pistols, and, buckling his belt tightly about him, turned to the seigneur and said: “I will take my chances with Abednego. Where does she lie—the Honeyflower, Abednego?”
“Off the point called Verclut,” answered the little man, who had travelled with Francis Drake.