"We need not go on with the wrangle," Jack said, rising. "I'm not bargaining with you. If it's worth two hundred pounds to you, all right. If it isn't, we'll part here, and hope you have the gratitude to appreciate what has already been done for you at the risk of Mr. Taberman's life. Come, we've wasted too much time over this already."
"Do you think my time isn't worth anything?" cried the other,—apparently losing all control of his temper. "I've wasted too much already. Get up your damned anchor, you mercenary Yankee"—
"Come, sir!" broke in Jack sharply, "apologize at once! At once! You have been insulting us this half hour like an utter cad, and I've made all the allowances I'm equal to."
The collector regarded him with furious eyes, but seemed struggling with himself until he could command his manner and his voice.
"I—I beg your pardon," he said in a hard tone. Then he added, in a voice softer and more grave, "Indeed, I beg your pardon most sincerely. My cursed temper got the better of me. Does your offer still hold?"
"If you wish," Jack answered stiffly.
"Then—two hundred pounds—I accept it. Two hundred pounds sterling, to be paid on our safe arrival in port at Plymouth." He sighed, and put out his hand to the captain. "Will you pardon my tongue?" he asked.
There was more ingenuousness in this trifling act than in anything Tab or Jack had yet seen in him. The real man seemed for a moment to show; and as Jack accepted the collector's apology and took his hand, Jerry had a fleeting glimpse—short as a flash of changing light—of another and franker Wrenmarsh, accustomed to hide under a veil of shams and mockeries made necessary by his difficult vocation.
Wrenmarsh then asked if he might have some letters mailed ashore, and Jack offered to take them himself in half an hour's time. While the collector was below writing these, the captain and the mate talked things over on deck. Tab had to congratulate Jack again, and over and over, fairly beaming with delight whenever he thought of the happy stage to which affairs had been brought. When he discovered that the captain had confessed the lifting of the Merle, he was for a moment disconcerted.
"Oh, Jacko, how could you give that away?" he cried.