“Ha!” Barbados gasped. “I have been called worse things than that—things that you do not know exists, wench! Think you to hurt my tough hide with words?”
“Have you no manhood?” she asked. “Is it an honor for a score of men to take a girl captive? You struck down my father and burned my home! You sent to his death the man I love—”
“There are other men,” said Barbados, “and other homes. And I did not strike down your father—Sanchez did that. From what he tells me, the blow was not a fatal one.”
“You are the chief of murderers and thieves, the one responsible,” she said.
“Words do not hurt my tough hide, I have said. It were best for you to be calm.”
“Calm?” The señorita crept from the bunk, weak and staggering, her face white, her lips trembling, a suspicion of tears in her eyes. “Calm?” she repeated. “And how can you expect me to be calm? What is there in the future for me, save dishonor or death? When the moment comes, it will not take me long to choose!”
“Ha! When the moment comes, you may change your mind!”
“He whom you sent to death in the sea was worth ten score of you!” she cried, stepping closer to him. “And each of his friends who follow in that other ship are worth ten score of you! Do you think that you can escape them forever?”
“I can have them wiped from the face of the earth!” Barbados replied.
“Escape them, possibly—but not me!” she cried. “I have seen you kill the thing I love! And so—”