‘Nay,’ said I, ‘there are worse things than reading a good book. Where is your black flag, Master Jensen?’
You should have seen how, just for a moment, he glared at me. He was armed, of course, and I think at that moment that he was sorely minded to take my life. But I had a pistol on the table, and my hand lay on the pistol, and the muzzle pointed across the table very straightly in the direction of Cornelys Jensen. Then the angry look fell away from his face, and he broke into long, low laughter, moving his head slowly up and down, and fixing me very keenly with his bright eyes.
‘You are a smart lad,’ he said at last. ‘What the plague have you to do with my black flag?’
‘What have you to do with it were a question more to the point,’ I answered him, and I make no doubt now that in speaking as I did I was doing a very foolish thing. But I was only a boy, and inexperienced, and indeed all my life I have been given to blurting out things that mayhap I had better have kept to myself.
He laughed again.
‘Nay,’ he said, ‘it is one of my most treasured possessions. I hauled it down with mine own hands from a pirate ship in my youth, when we captured the bark of that nefarious sea rover Captain Anthony. I have carried it with me for luck ever since, and it has always brought me luck—always till now.’ Then he nodded his head again slowly twice or thrice. ‘I will give it to you if you wish, Master Ralph,’ he said; ‘I will give it to you for luck.’
‘I do not want it,’ I said angrily, being somewhat confused with the turn things had taken. ‘I am not superstitious for luck.’
Which indeed was not true, for I never met a seaman yet who was not superstitious; but I was wrathful, and I knew not what to say.