Ingle laid his red finger to the side of his redder nose.
"Are you Captain or I?"
"You are Captain but not Pope; I suppose you may be questioned."
"All in good time, Master Claiborne; all in good time. Yonder on the strip of beach below the bluff I will give my orders and divulge my plans."
"Fend off!" called Claiborne, sullenly, to the man at the prow of the small boat, and seating himself in the stern he pulled his cloak close about him, muttering to himself,—
"Damn the fellow! I begin to hate him worse than Calvert."
"Dick," said Ralph Ingle as the two brothers were left alone together, "what treatment might a prisoner look for if brought aboard this ship?"
"Why, all the difference betwixt a swift death and a slow one."
"And if the prisoner were a woman—"