“For her sake, yes. And for the sake of the merchants concerned in the venture with me.”
“Your tobacco will keep them from loss. They’re all right. Do you know that your Darien scheme is known in Spain?”
“Ah. Then. Then the Government will curry favour with Spain by arresting us on this pretext, and claiming to have stopped us on her account?”
“That is, of course, possible. It depends on party needs at the moment. I know nothing of that.”
“It is something you ought to reckon, Howard.”
“Well. If I don’t arrest you. You’ve put me in such an awkward position. I can’t very well arrest my guests. It would bring me into disfavour, and my office into disrepute. I don’t know what to say. Are you ready to sail?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you sail two or three days ago? As soon as you’d made your voyage. Why in the world did you wait for the tobacco fleet?”
“We were kept waiting for our new topmast. We found our foretopmast sprung. It was only this morning that we finished setting up the rigging on the new spar.”
“You understand, Margaret, that at this moment you’re Stukeley’s judge. You’ve got power of life and death over him. You can turn it over in your mind, and then say, whether you wish me to arrest him, or not. You wish to spare the girl, his wife. Looking at it impartially, I should doubt whether you would spare her by sparing him. The man’s a scoundrel.”