“He’s not here, my lord,” I said.
At the sound of my voice he sprang to his feet.
“I should advise your lordship to sit still,” I said. “The wind is very boisterous, and we are not under bare poles. If you exert yourself, you may capsize the boat.”
He sat down mechanically, and put his hand to his forehead. I watched him curiously. It was the strangest trick that fortune had played him.
His hand dropped at last, and he straightened himself, with a long breath. “Who threw me into the boat?” he demanded.
“The honour was mine,” declared the minister.
The King’s minion lacked not the courage of the body, nor, when passionate action had brought him naught, a certain reserve force of philosophy. He now did the best thing he could have done,—burst into a roar of laughter. “Zooks!” he cried. “It’s as good a comedy as ever I saw! How’s the play to end, captain? Are we to go off laughing, or is the end to be bloody after all? For instance, is there murder to be done?” He looked at me boldly, one hand on his hip, the other twirling his mustaches.
“We are not all murderers, my lord,” I told him. “For the present you are in no danger other than that which is common to us all.”
He looked at the clouds piling behind us, thicker and thicker, higher and higher, at the bending mast, at the black water swirling now and again over the gunwales. “It’s enough,” he muttered.
I beckoned to Diccon, and putting the tiller into his hands went forward to reef the sail. When it was done and I was back in my place, my lord spoke again.