“Then deny it now, Timothy. I am going to the Azores because I believe that a house there can finish the story which the sea has begun. That is the whole truth of it. There are men afloat in a ship, Timothy, who hide some of the world’s greatest criminals and their plunder from the police of all cities. That is what I had supposed, and this voyage has gratified my supposition. I am going to the Azores to meet some of these men face to face——”
“And Joan Fordibras?”
“I hope from my heart that I shall never see her again.”
“Ye hope nothing of the kind, man. ’Tis lurking in yer heart the thought that ye will see and save her. I honour ye for it. I would not turn ye from your purpose for a fortune upon the table, poor divil of a man that I am. Go where ye will, Ean Fabos, there’s one that will go with ye to the world’s end and back again and say that friendship sent him.”
“Then I am not to put you on a liner, Timothy?”
“May that same ship rot on verdurous reefs.”
“But you are risking your life, man.”
He stood up and flicked the ash of his cigar into the sea.
“Yon is life,” he said, “a little red light in the houses of our pleasure, and then the ashes on the waters. Ean, me bhoy, I go with you to Santa Maria——”
We smoked awhile in silence. Presently he asked me how I came to think of the Azores at all, and why I expected to find Joan Fordibras upon the island of Santa Maria.