“I was trying to save her from you,” I answered.
“By God,” he said. “These English—I’ve seen them, spit the child on the mother’s breast. I’ve seen them set fire to the thatch of the widow and childless. But this.... But this.... I can save you, I tell you.”
“You can’t make me go through worse than I’ve borne,” I answered. Sorrow and all he might wish on my head, my life was too precious to him till I spoke. I wasn’t going to speak.
“I’ll search every ship in the harbour,” he said passionately.
“Do,” I said. “Bring your Lugareños to the task.”
Upon the whole, I wasn’t much afraid. Unless he got definite evidence he couldn’t—in the face of the consul’s protests, and the presence of the admiral—touch the Lion again. He fixed his eyes intently upon me.
“You came in the American brigantine,” he said. “It’s known you landed in her boat.”
I didn’t answer him; it was plain enough that the drogher’s arrival had either not been reported to him, or it had been searched in vain.
“In her boat,” he repeated. “I tell you I know she is not dead; even you, an Englishman, must have a different face if she were.”
“I don’t at least ask you for life,” I said, “to enjoy with her.”