Hans responded graciously, "Thank you. We knew that you would come as soon as you understood the reason in it."
"Here's your pistol." Pieter extended the weapon.
"I got to warn you," the constable pronounced, "that I am going to hold you responsible for anything that happens here while I am away. And I better tell you that I won't put up with any law-breaking."
"Good!" Hans said. "You are a conscientious man!"
The mist dipped and twisted about them as they started down the sand beach toward Pieter's farm. Ramsay tried to find answers to the many questions in his mind. Certainly somebody had lured them away from their fishing gear. Who had done so? Was Devil Chad involved? If so, why did Jake Hillis accompany them at all? Certainly the servant would not willingly provoke a fight with the master. If Devil Chad was the leader of the pirates, did he trust his minion so little that he had told him nothing?
Ramsay shrugged: they would have to wait and find out.
Reaching the farm, Pieter entered the house to get the shotgun and a pair of exquisitely carved pistols which Ramsay had never seen before. Dueling pistols, they looked like, and Ramsay glanced curiously at Pieter. The man was anything except stolid, yet he never spoke of his past and of what had really brought him across the Atlantic Ocean to this wild inland sea. Ramsay dismissed the thought. In this country it was often just as well to forget a man's past or that he had ever had a past.
Jake Hillis looked narrowly as Pieter handed Hans a pistol, kept one for himself and gave the shotgun to Ramsay. "I don't hold with shooting scrapes!" he said. "And I don't want any part of 'em!"
"There'll be none," Hans assured him, "unless we are shot at first."
They launched a pound boat, and Hans took the rower's seat. Jake Hillis sat beside Pieter and Ramsay crouched to one side. A shiver ran through him. The mist seemed to be settling in even more thickly; they had scarcely left the shore when they were unable to see it. From the top of the house, the bedraggled Captain Klaus squawked his protest at such weather.