"Come on hoard, thou rascally Scot," cried a voice; "and marry! come quickly, lest we fire again!"
"Fling me owre a rope, then," replied Jamie, who, but for the sake of Mary, would have jumped overboard rather than obeyed.
A rope was thrown to him, and in another moment he found himself standing on the deck of the stately ship commanded by Sir Stephen Bull, and he was roughly dragged before that portly commander, who appeared in half armour at the door of the poop, which contained the principal cabins.
"Thou hast given us trouble enough, in all conscience, fellow!" said he, angrily; "why laid ye not to?"
"Because Sir Andrew Wood is not in these waters; the ships of Sir William Merrimonth and John Barton are all in the western seas, and we have none to protect us now," said Gair, with a sigh of bitterness as he looked after his boat, now cut adrift and tossing on the sea with the dead body of his companion in it.
"Ah! and so Sir Andrew Wood is not in the seas?"
"No, sir; but is daily expected," said Gair, spitefully.
"Good," said Sir Stephen, with a smile of gratification on his broad and bearded face; "that is the reason, Scot, which brings us here."
"I pray you to release me, gude sir," implored Jamie, as he stood, bonnet in hand, amid a circle of armed Londoners, who stared at the "rough-footed Scot" as if he had been a wild animal; "I am but a puir fisher carle, wi' a wife and a wean to support in these hard times of civil war and trouble; I lost my nets yesternicht in the squall, and ye have cut my boat adrift this morning—I am a ruined man!" he added, as he almost wept in the agony of his spirit.
"A ruined man, indeed! so much the better for our purpose, perhaps," said Sir Stephen Bull, with an icy smile; "wouldst know the ships of Sir Andrew Wood if you saw them now?"