“I think, sir, I’d like to be. Don’t let Mr. Burls hear, sir. He’s listening. I’d like to be one of these buccaneers, sir. Fellows what goes about fighting the Spaniards. They live an open-air life. Not like here, sir. Oh, I’d like to lie by a camp-fire, sir, with a lot of big bronzed men. And to have a gun, sir. And then to attack a city full of treasure.”
“But I should think that was very dangerous. Isn’t it?”
“No, sir. Not by all accounts, sir. A poor lot, sir, the Spaniards. They’re not like us, you know, sir. Our fellows are a bull-dog lot, sir. The bull-dog breed, sir.”
“Really!”
“Oh yes, sir. Why, sir, only a day or two ago there come the news-letter from Plymouth. I dare say you saw it, sir. And there was a Virginia ship at Salcombe, it says. Did you see that bit, sir? And a forger was escaping from the constables, and he got on board this ship and bribes the captain, and he carries the man off safe, with the men-of-war all firing broadsides on him. Oh, it must be fine to hear the cannon-balls coming whizz.”
“Indeed! A forger, you say?”
“A forger, sir; but he’d done other things as well, sir, of course. And he’d a lady with him, too, sir.”
“But you wouldn’t like to be that sort of man?”
“No, sir.”
“What would you do to the forger, if you caught him?”