“Only my ankles. My lord would have had me bound hand and foot; but you were raving for water, and, taking you for a dying man, they were so humane as to leave my hands free to attend you.”
“My lord would have had you bound,” I said slowly. “Then it's my lord's day.”
“High noon and blazing sunshine,” he answered, with a rueful laugh. “It seems that half the folk on board had gaped at him at court. Lord! when he put his foot over the side of the ship, how the women screeched and the men stared! He 's cock of the walk now, my Lord Carnal, the King's favorite!”
“And we are pirates.”
“That 's the case in a nutshell,” he answered cheerfully.
“Do they know how the ship came to strike upon that reef?” I asked.
“Probably not, unless madam has enlightened them. I did n't take the trouble,—they would n't have believed me,—and I can take my oath my lord has n't. He was only our helpless prisoner, you know; and they would think madam mistaken or bewitched.”
“It 's not a likely tale,” I said grimly, “seeing that we had already opened fire upon them.”
“I trust in heaven the sharks got the men who fired the culverins!” he cried, and then laughed at his own savagery.
I lay still and tried to think. “Who are they on board?” I asked at last.