“They’re men enough to eat English bread, I expect,” said Martin.
“See that you get English money. I wouldn’t trust ’em far,” declared the cook.
Martin laughed as he went down the side. He had already got one or two new customers for his master, and he was so much interested in this Portugal vessel that he felt rather excited at the prospect of boarding her.
But as he rowed towards her he began to have qualms. It was members of her crew that had chased him that night when he had rowed Boulter’s wherry down to Deptford and picked up the fugitive boy. He remembered their wild looks and savage cries; above all, he remembered the face of the man who had urged them on—the man who had been his passenger—Blackbeard himself. What if he were recognised when he ran alongside the vessel?
This idea daunted him, and swinging the boat round, he headed up the river. But before he was half-way back to London Bridge he wished he had taken the risk. After all, what had he to fear? Blackbeard might not be aboard the ship; the crew had seen him only indistinctly in the dusk, and they had been more intent on the boy he had taken into the boat than on himself.
Further, suppose Blackbeard did recognise him, what then? He would know him only as the rower of the wherry, who had allowed a boy swimming in the river to climb into his boat for safety. There was nothing in that; anyone else might have done the same. Blackbeard could not know that he lived in the same house as Mr. Seymour, and was aware of his mysterious visits to that gentleman.
But though he repented his timidity, he felt that he had come too far to return now. As it turned out, he was glad of his decision, for in the evening, just before closing time at the shop, when he was sweeping up the flour and breadcrumbs that littered the floor, and had his back to the door, he was startled to hear behind him the husky voice of the man he had been thinking about.
“Pardon, sir,” said the voice; and Martin noticed that it had a foreign accent, not at all like that in which Blackbeard had spoken to Mr. Seymour.
He glanced over his shoulder, thinking he might be mistaken; but no, he could not mistake that swarthy face and strangely-trimmed beard.
“Pardon, sir, are you the baker as send bread to the ships on the river?”