This sort of talk from me must have sounded very strange and I was not surprised at Norton’s dumbfounded expression.
“But we only take from them what they have stolen from somebody else,” he argued. “They have no right to it, while we can reasonably claim it as a reward for avenging those whom they have killed and robbed. Besides that, we ought to get a medal from the British Government for every one of those devils we put out of the way, for we are doing the world a service.”
“That is no argument,” I contended, remembering Miss Crofton’s curt reproval of my own defence to her, along just the same line, only a month before. “The fact that they steal from others gives us no shadow of right to steal from them. Perhaps it is a good thing to kill them, but I hold no commission and draw no salary for that sort of thing. If the world wants them put out of the way, let the world attend to it. The world has never done anything for me that should make me want to assume the whole contract. If it is a public service to slay pirates, I have certainly killed my share, and directed the slaughter of enough more of them to absolve all of my most distant relatives from any further responsibility in the matter. Somebody else can now step up and kill his share, and they can keep it going as long as they like. I am sick of murdering and robbing, even though they are pirates, and there will be no more of it from my ships.”
“What do you know about this ‘Beautiful White Devil’ Ah Fen has been telling me about?” he shot at me. He evidently expected to catch me off my guard, but I was looking for just such an inquiry and was not at all perturbed.
“There is no such person,” I answered with perfect truthfulness. “I satisfied myself on that point while I was in Hong Kong. That is only one of the wild stories you hear out here where there are so many people who smoke opium. There may be a man pirate who sometimes masquerades in female attire, but there is no woman pirate.”
“It may be,” he suggested sneeringly, “that this sudden decision of yours to retire is due to the fact that Moy Sen has threatened to exterminate us. If you don’t want to fight the old scoundrel, why don’t you say so, instead of backing out on an assumption of morality that does not harmonize with your makeup and with which it is far beyond me to agree.”
That dart struck a tender spot. I would be the last one to quit under a threat or under fire, and Norton knew it. The prospect of a rattling final fight was most alluring. Fighting pirates, I reasoned with myself, especially when they had declared war on you, was altogether different from preying on them, which I had given my word I would not do. It would be at least six or eight months before my beloved Kate could secure her pardon and meet me in Bombay, where we had planned to be married, and that, I figured, would give me time to accept the “defi” of the King of the Pirates, if he moved as rapidly as we might expect.
“Far from running away from a fight of that kind,” I told Norton, “I should much rather run into it. We will cruise around a while to see whether the Chinkies really mean to give us battle. But it is the sport of it that I want and nothing else, for if it comes off it will be a great fight. There must be no more looting.”
Norton apparently considered that he had shaken my decision to quit preying on the pirates, wherein he was mistaken, and hoped to be able to induce me to abandon it entirely. At any rate we were of one mind in hunting for a scrap with the Chinkies, just for the fun of it, and harmony was restored.
We loafed around in the path of the pirates below Great Natuna Island but nothing happened for ten days or two weeks and it began to look as though they were not seeking us very earnestly. We saw several junks which we could easily have stood up and robbed, but I would not permit it. Late one evening, just as the galloping night was closing in, an enormous junk appeared suddenly from behind an island and came sailing down a narrow strait through which we were just crawling. Instead of hurrying along through the dangerous passage, as she would have done had she been an honest trader, she began to shorten sail after she had passed us. That aroused our suspicions and we determined to look her over. She appeared to carry only a small crew, but when we came together it seemed to me for a moment that she had more Chinamen on board than I had ever seen before at one time. We increased our speed a little and drew up alongside to get a good look at her. We were almost on an even keel with her when she swung suddenly to starboard and would have smashed into our bow if we had not gone full speed astern without losing a second. As she passed under our short bowsprit she threw a grappling iron which caught on our port bow, and we let it stay there.