“Don’t say that,” cried Ethan in a sharp, pained voice. “I can’t stand it, Shamus; the thought that we may be chained up in an English ship or a prison of some sort when our country needs every pair of hands that can oppose her foes, makes me desperate. It’s like despair itself!”
About an hour after the schooner had got well under way, Danvers came down into the hold with a lantern. He stood over them and stared coldly from one to the other.
“Ironed like thieves,” he said with a sneer. “It would delight the heart of your grandfather, old Clarette, boy, or your English father, to see you so, wouldn’t it?”
“They would be glad to think that I have suffered something for my country.”
“Your country!” snarled Danvers. “Bah, that nest of rats which you call a Congress will be broken up before long; the arch-traitor, Washington, will dangle from the end of a rope, while his tatterdemalions will be hunted through the woods like foxes.”
“That was said long ago,” replied Ethan. “But it is all as far from accomplishment as ever. The American people will never bow the knee to a king’s will again.”
Danvers had not yet overcome his anger of the day, and now he seemed upon the point of bursting into a blaze of fury. But with an effort he calmed himself; flashing the rays of the lantern into Ethan’s face, he said:
“Boy, somehow or other you have the knack of angering me, and when people anger me they are in danger, especially when they are enemies to the king. In certain crises I even possess the legal power of life and death; and were I so minded I could string you from the rigging of this vessel. What do you say to that?”
“Nothing,” returned Ethan, looking him unflinchingly in the eye.
“Ask me that question,” said Longsword, “and, faith, I’ll say plenty.”