"So we are!" returned Mr. Gladsden, thinking, with all the possible mischances, he was more agreeably placed here vis-à-vis with the gentleman of the night, than clinging on a bar outside the top of a tower fifty feet high.
"Shall we two go it alone, Captain?"
"I was just going to ask the favour, Captain."
The other "captain" nodded and grinned under his long hook nose, to the banker and others at hand, as much as to say, "Now I have my gentleman precisely in the corner I have been driving him to."
It was the Englishman's turn to cut.
"How's the play?" he inquired.
"Will you venture all?" the highwayman leader returned in a mocking way.
"Why should I not? You have so far afforded me so much hearty entertainment that I am entirely at your disposal."
Don Aníbal made a grimace not unlike that when the marvellous shot had allowed the last speaker to drop out of the swing of his navaja.
"Even in case I risk the whole heap?" resumed Matasiete, laying his long fingers out on the pillar of gold coin before him.