"Aye, strange enough," he turned human all at once and laughed in my face like a boy. "It is a beaver, an animal of the New World and of the old, yet stranger never lived. You will see many a beaver-skin—aye, and sell them, too, perchance!"
"Then you have been in the New World!" cried out Ruth, settling down snugly at his side. "Tell us all about it, sir!"
"The tale would outlast the voyage," he said, looking down at her face. A sudden mad thought came into my mind, and before I thought to stay it, sprang to my lips.
"In the New World," I asked eagerly, "did you ever know a man who was called The Pike?"
The answer to that question was wonderful enough. With one quick motion he leaned forward and gripped my shoulder in a hand of iron; and when his eyes bored into mine own I all but cried out, so like pure flame was the look therein.
"What know you of him?" he asked bitingly, and his tone minded me of my father's when he had flung the Commissioner's man over the rail. In that instant I feared this old stranger as never in my life had I feared anyone, no, not even my father; and so I gave him all I knew of Gib o' Clarclach, without let or hindrance. While I spoke, his grip loosened, but his shaggy brows came down until they met.
"Lad," he said when I had made an end, "keep this maid from that man as if he were the plague itself! Let him not touch her, should you ever meet again, and if he so much as looks at her put your knife into him as into a dog gone mad!"
"Why, the fellow is aboard now," I answered in wonder, and in no little fear. But to my surprise the old man only turned and gazed out into the sunset once more, checking Ruth when she would have spoken.
"My children," he said very softly, "while I am here you are safe from this man, remember that. Nay, I would not harm him. I am an old man, but I have been where no other white man has been; I have been a ruler among men whose skins are not as ours, and I go even now to end my days among these people. He, also, has been among them, and I know not what evil he is about here; but it seems to me that the hand of God has drawn me to you and to this ship, lest you come to harm. Now leave me, my children, and count me ever as a friend of the best."
Hand in hand, like two frighted bairns, we left him and went aft in awe. When we were alone in the cabin, all the other folk being above, Ruth looked strangely at me and caught my hand.