"And who is her master?"
"The man she belongs to."
"She's a free-trader then?"
"The sea is as free to a free ship, as the land to a free man, I take it."
"Reptile! dare you barter words with me?—Your commander's name?"
The boy made no answer.
"Dost hear me? Your commander's name?" and as the question was repeated, the mailed glove of the interrogator pressed painfully into Springall's flesh, without, however, eliciting a reply.
"He has a name, I suppose?"
"That you, or any cowardly night-walker, would as soon not hear; for it is the name of a brave man," replied the youth at last, struggling violently, but ineffectually, to reach the whistle that was suspended round his neck.
"Fool!" exclaimed the stranger, "dost bandy strength as well as words? Learn that in an instant I could drop thee into the rolling ocean, like the egg of the unwise bird." He raised the youth from the earth, and held him over the precipice, whose base was now buried in the wild waste of waters, that foamed and howled, as if demanding from the unyielding rock a tribute or a sacrifice.