“If you come out very well, and we do not sink you before supper, I may ask you to come and see me.”
“H’m! Is that all? After spoiling my reputation, I’m to be let come and see you.”
“Isn’t that enough to start with? What has spoiled your reputation?”
“A man, a boy, and a slip of a girl.” He looked meaningly enough at her now. She laughed. “See,” he added; “give me a chance. Let me search the Ninety-Nine for contraband,—that’s all I’ve got to do with,—and then I can keep quiet about the rest. If there’s no contraband, whatever else there is, I’ll hold my tongue.”
“I’ve told you what there is.”
He did not understand. “Will you let me search?” Joan’s eyes flashed. “Once and for all, no, Orvay Lafarge. I am the daughter of a man whom you and your men would have killed or put in the dock. He’s been a smuggler, and I know it. Who has he robbed? Not the poor, not the needy; but a rich Government that robs also. Well, in the hour when he ceases to be a smuggler for ever, armed men come to take him. Why didn’t they do so before? Why so pious all at once? No; I am first the daughter of my father, and afterwards—”
“And afterwards?”
“What to-morrow may bring forth.”
Lafarge became very serious. “I must go back. Mr. Martin is signalling, and your father is calling. I do not understand, but you’re the one woman in the world for my money, and I’m ready to stand by that and leave the customs to-morrow if need be.”
Joan’s eyes blazed, her cheek was afire. “Leave it to-day. Leave it now. Yes; that’s my one condition. If you want me, and you say you do, come aboard the Ninety-Nine, and for to-day be one of us-to-morrow what you will.”