Next day when Desmond, having finished his midday meal of rice and mangoes, had returned to his workshop, Diggle sauntered in.
"Ah, my young friend," he said in his quiet voice and with his usual smile, "doubtless you have expected a visit from me. Night brings counsel. I did not visit you yesterday, thinking that after sleeping over the amiable and generous proposition made to you by my friend Angria you would view it in another light. I trust that during the nocturnal hours you have come to perceive the advantages of choosing the discreet part. Let us reason together."
There were several natives with them in the workshop, but none of them understood English, and the two Englishmen could talk at ease.
"Reason!" said Desmond in reply to Diggle's last sentence. "If you are going to talk of what your pirate friend spoke of yesterday, it is mere waste of time. I shall never agree."
"Words, my young friend, mere words! You will be one of us yet. You will never have such a chance again. Why, in a few years you will be able to return to England, if you will, a rich man, a very nawab {governor}. My friend Angria has his faults; nemo est sine culpa: but he is at least generous. An instance! The man who took the chief part in the capture of the Dutchman two years ago--what is he now? A naib {deputy governor}, a man of wealth, of high repute at the Nizam's court. There is no reason why you should not follow so worthy an example; cut out an Indiaman or two, and Desmond Burke may, if he will, convey a shipload of precious things to the shores of Albion, and enjoy his leisured dignity on a landed estate of his own. He shall drive a coach while his oaf of a brother perspires behind a plow."
Desmond was silent. Diggle watched him keenly, and after a slight pause continued:
"This is no great thing that is asked of you. You sail on one of Angria's grabs; you are set upon the shore; you enter Bombay with a likely story of escape from the fortress of the Pirate; you are a hero, the boon fellow of the men, the pet of the ladies--for there are ladies in Bombay, forma praestante puellae. In a week you know everything, all the purposes that Angria's spies have failed to discover. One day you disappear; the ladies wail and tear their hair; a tiger has eaten you; in a week you will be forgotten. But you are back in Angria's fortress, no longer a slave, downtrodden and despised; but a free man, a rich man, a potentate to be. Is it not worth thinking of, my young friend, especially when you remember the other side of the picture? It is a dark side; an unpleasant side; even, let me confess, horrible: I prefer to keep it to the wall."
He waved his gloved hand, deprecatingly, watching Desmond with the same intentness. The boy was dumb: he might also have been deaf. Diggle drew from his fob an elaborately chased snuffbox and took a pinch of fine rappee, Desmond mechanically noticing that the box bore ornamentation of Dutch design.
"If I were not your friend," continued Diggle, "I might say that your attitude is one of sheer obstinacy. Why not trust us? You see we trust you. I stand pledged for you with Angria; but I flatter myself I know a man when I see one: si fractus illabitur orbis--you have already shown your mettle. Of course I understand your scruples; I was young myself once; I know the generous impulses that rule the hearts of youth. But this is a matter that must be decided, not by feeling, but by hard fact and cold reason. Who benefits by your scruples? A set of hard-living money grubbers in Bombay who fatten on the oppression of the ryot, who tithe mint and anise and cumin, who hoard up treasure which they will take back with their jaundiced livers to England, there to become pests to society with their splenetic and domineering tempers. What's the Company to you, or you to the Company? Why, Governor Pitt was an interloper; and your own father: yes, he was an interloper, and an interloper of the best."
"But not a pirate," said Desmond hotly, his scornful silence yielding at last.