XXVII
At the counting-room Charles greeted Anthony with a tight hand-clasp and said warmly:
"The villains! The infernal rogues! To strike you down and drag you aboard their dirty craft! We shall see to them before they have gone much further."
In his own room, he sat in the corner of his sofa, nursing his lame foot, and urged Anthony to tell of his escape. As the young man carried the story forward, Charles's face, which had been white and worn, flushed, and his eyes shone with their old brightness; at the episode of the arms-room and that of Anthony's struggle with the captain and the two lieutenants, he flamed up, rocking to and fro on the sofa and chuckling rapturously. But when the picture on deck was thrown before him he got up and began to prowl the floor, his head back and his laughter filling the room; at the girl's being taken out of the schooner, his eyes were filled with tears, his arms were about Anthony's shoulders, he shook with mirth.
"By God!" he pronounced, "it was wonderful! I would have given anything to have seen it. Congreve, nor Webster, nor Kitt Marlowe himself, haven't a bit of comedy to equal it. It was perfect."
During the afternoon Anthony was much noticed in the counting-room because of his bandaged head and the rather wavering account of his experiences which was going about; and at dusk Whitaker bore him away to a tavern for supper.
"Eat what you like," was the dandy's reply to Anthony's protests; "and drink nothing at all if your stomach is not in the way of it. But I must be seen in your company; the city is all agape at your adventures, and it will do me more good socially than the services of a dozen clever tailors."
They ate at the Crooked Billet, and all about there was a murmuring and nodding and a glancing from the corners of eyes; Le Mousquet was still hot on the city's tongue, and the man who had striven so with her company was a person to be seen and commented upon.
"What you did I don't know," said Whitaker. "Some have it that you boarded the vessel of your own free will and tried to capture her single-handed; others insist you were kidnapped, and swam ashore with the blackguards popping at you with small arms from the deck. And I've heard—though Heaven knows how such a tale got abroad—that a woman figured in the matter, that she'd eloped with some jolly blade or other and you'd taken it on yourself to get her back, but whether for her people's sake or your own the gossip does not state."
Anthony replied briefly to the chatter of his friend, and after a little Whitaker drifted to another subject. He split a pigeon in two and helped himself to the good hot bread as he said: