"Now, in the name of all the fiends, what is afoot?" he cried out, though with a cautious cock of his eyes toward the deck, for English sailors are not black slaves when it comes to discussing matters of weight.
"There is a plot afoot against His Majesty King Charles, and you but yesterday, that being also a day on which it is unlawful to unload a ship, discharged a portion of your cargo, toward its furtherance and abetting," said I.
"Hell and damnation!" he cried out, "when I trust a woman's tongue again may I swing from my own yard-arms. What brought that fair-faced devil into it, anyway? Be there not men enough in this colony?"
"And you keep not a civil tongue in your head when you speak of Mistress Mary Cavendish; you will find of a surety that there be one man in this colony, sir," said I.
He laughed in that mocking fashion of his which incensed me still further. Then he spoke civilly enough, and said that he meant no disrespect to one of the fairest ladies whom he had ever had the good fortune to see, but that it was so well known as to be no more slight in mentioning than the paint and powder wherewith a woman enhanced her beauty, that a woman's tongue could not be trusted like a man's, and that it were a pity that money, which were much better spent by her for pretty follies, should be put to such grim uses, and where were the gallants of Virginia that they suffered it, but did not rather empty their own purses?
I explained, being somewhat mollified, and also somewhat of his way of thinking, that men there were, but there was little gold since the Navigation Act. And I informed Captain Tabor how Mistress Mary Cavendish, having an estate not so heavily charged with expenses as some, and being her own mistress with regard to the disposal of its revenues, had the means which the men lacked.
"But what was the news which brought you thither, sir?" demanded
Captain Tabor.
"You know of the plot—" I begun, but he broke in upon me fiercely.
"May the fiends take me, but what know I of a plot?" he cried.
"Can I not bring over gowns and kerchiefs and silken ribbons for a pretty maid without a plot? How knew you that? There is the woman's tongue again. But can I not bring over goods even of such sort; might I not with good reason suppose them to be for the defence of the cause of his most gracious Majesty King Charles against the savages, or any malcontents in his colonies? What plot, sirrah?"