“Avast there, Mr Dawkins. I’ll have no swearing aboard my ship.”
“Your ship, was it? ’Twas this pretty little monkey was skipper just now,” growled Dawkins. “Come,” he went on, “I know when I’m beaten, I do. I had some opportunities to learn, you see. Now you got the weather-gauge of poor old Dawkins, not a doubt of it. Let’s know the worst. ’Tis Jevon Murch as put you up to this here little game—enticing a man with a invitation to dinner, and what not, and call yourselves gentlemen. I’d make better gentlemen out of a pope’s head and a slush-bucket, split me!” said Dawkins, his choler getting the better of him.
“No,” said Pomfrett, quietly, “Mr Murch knows nothing of the matter. It’s you and I that have to settle accounts, Mr Dawkins.”
We were seated at the table, opposite the old buccaneer, each with a couple of pistols lying under his hand, the candle-flames streaming this way and then that way, with the motion of the ship. Morgan Leroux had retired into a corner and sat in the shadow, with her chin in her hand, watching us under her level, black brows. We could hear the noise of Dawkins’s men carousing with the crew in the waist.
“Settle away, then, Mr Supercargo,” said Dawkins, who appeared a little more at ease upon learning that Murch was not at hand. “There’s no man alive what’s more open to fair discussion than me, though I say it.”
“Very well,” says Brandon. “First, then, you sold Mr Winter and myself for slaves.”
“It looks like as if I did at this present moment, don’t it?” growled Dawkins. “But I won’t quarrel over details, cap’n. Heave ahead.”
“Second, you stole the Blessed Endeavour.”
“Who says so?”
“Well, you did, you know,” returned Brandon, a little set back. “What’s the use of talking?”