“Do you mean,” said Brandon, stupidly, “that you’re coming with us?”
Sure, here was a laggard in love, if ever there was one. Morgan drew a little apart and looked at him. There was an uncomfortable silence. Here were we, lost, starving, in imminent danger of capture, and we must needs stand and dally with fine feelings.
“You would be rid of me, Mr Pomfrett,” says Morgan, presently, with a formidable quietude. “Is that what you would say? Out with it!”
Brandon clutched his chin. “I would not be unkind. I am thinking of you——” he began.
“That’s enough,” said Morgan. She plunged into the thicket, and was gone. In the deep stillness, we heard her crashing through the underwood. So we stood for a long time, till the sounds died away. I don’t know what were Brandon’s feelings; for myself, I own I felt a certain relief. What we chiefly wanted was breakfast. As the light broadened in the sky, we went a little forward, and presently found a patch of sunlight in a glade, where Brandon sat down, while I went to shoot something eatable with a pistol. Since the danger of pursuit was gone with Morgan’s departure, one might, I supposed, shoot as one pleased. I wasted a deal of ammunition on that breakfast. A pistol in unskilful hands is a miserable weapon for the uses of the chase, but I brought down a fat bird like a pheasant, a sitting shot, at last, and we devoured it raw, and found it excellent good. Brandon drank the warm blood like any heathen savage, and was wonderfully cheered. I told him, then, where we were—not in Yucatan at all, but on the coast of Darien; and I related Mistress Morgan’s story of her grandmother, the Incomparable Lady.
“Oh, now I understand,” said Pomfrett. “But Murch has lost his chance. We had found the plate, with the help of the old negro, when Dawkins came up with double our numbers. There was a bloody fight, and we lost nearly all our men. The rest escaped as best they could, and a fine march we had of it, with neither bite nor sup for two days and two nights. Well, if Dawkins has the plunder, it’s mine.”
“If it please you to think so,” I said.
“Where’s the ship, do you think?” asked Brandon, disregarding innuendo.
“At sea, where else?”
“And where’s the nearest port?”