“H’m!” said Nick. “It makes quite a picture.”
“You’d have thought so if you had been in my place, Carter! I didn’t know whether I was scared, amused, angry, or bored; and I didn’t have time to analyze my sentiments, either, for when the chief touched his lips with his fingers, to signal me that he preferred that I should keep quiet, he remarked, quite calmly and in a perfectly natural tone:
“‘I don’t suppose you wish needlessly to frighten the ladies, do you?’
“‘Well, no,’ I replied, ‘I can’t say that I do. They have retired, however, and we need not disturb them.’
“‘On the contrary, my friend,’ he said, ‘it will be necessary that they are disturbed. But I am fond of the ladies. I do not like to frighten them—needlessly. Then, again, sometimes they faint away, or scream, and that offends me.’
“‘Indeed?’ I said. ‘Have I by mistake been smoking on the deck of your yacht, instead of my own?’ I intended that for sarcasm, Nick, but it fell flat. He didn’t see the point at all, for he replied, calmly, that I would find things much more to my taste for a few moments if I would take that view of it. ‘You may consider the Goalong as my property for the next half-hour,’ he said.”
“Were they armed?” asked Nick.
“The pirate said they were, and I have no doubt that they were, although I saw no sign of weapons of any kind, save that the chief wore a short, straight sword at his side, and while he talked to me he let his hand rest upon it, as if to call my attention to the fact.”