“I fear you would have me begin at the last end first, after all,” said Adam, thinking how recently he had fallen victim to Eros. “My tale is brief and of no interest. William bade me cultivate the society of gentlemen, when he sent me to England. Well, I had fencing and fiddling of an Italian nobleman; I have fought with holy friars and princes; I have sworn strange oaths with prelates and bishops; I have danced with nuns and duchesses; I have ridden to hounds with curs and Kings. If I have not learned drinking, gambling, love-making, dueling, swearing and sundry other pretty accomplishments, then beshrew me for a clod and call the court no place for schooling. I am richer than I was, since I may look up at any moment and see you both at a glance. By the same token I am happier. As to my heart, I’ll take oath I left it in Boston. And there you have me.”
“Oh, this sounds very naughty indeed,” said Mrs. Phipps.
“I never counseled you to apprentice yourself to the devil,” said Phipps. “You were first to learn navigation, of some——”
“Oh, of that I neglected to speak,” interrupted the rover. “William, you will never make an anchor out of sea foam, nor a solid ship’s master out of me, else my first or my last preceptor would have finished me off roundly.”
“Who was your latest chief?” the Captain inquired.
“Captain William Kidd,” said Adam, “a generous friend, a fearless and skilful seaman, and as bold a fighting man as ever clutched a hilt. I met him at Barcelona, shipped with him for Bristol, fell in with my beef-eaters, got rid of my money and pushed my sword through a pup—Lord Something-or-other——and was still in time to catch Captain Kidd at Portsmouth for New York. But I can’t bark enough for a sea-dog, as Kidd was good enough to tell me himself.”
William Phipps nodded and nodded. Outwardly he was calm enough; inwardly he stewed with heat. Adam had but added fuel to the fever of unrest and thirst for adventure with which he had been born. He was not jealous of all that his protégé had accomplished ahead of himself—indeed, he had furthered the lad’s advancement, at the expense of his own sense of bereavement when he and Adam parted,—but he was consumed with impatience to be hewing at the great career for which he had from boyhood felt himself destined. A light of determination burned in his eyes. He saw that the boy before him had utterly outstripped him—the boy to whom he had imparted all his own meager, self-acquired education. Not for a moment did he regret that from Hispaniola he had sent the lad to England, with a fellow-captain, nor would he for any price have stripped his protégé of one single experience, but his mouth grew dry with the lust for adventure that was glowing within him.
His wife saw these indications. She understood what was passing in his mind. Before she had even sighed to herself, as a woman must, who feels herself on the brink of a separation from one she truly loves, she consented mentally to what she knew he would presently suggest. What she was thus prepared for, came sooner than she had expected it might.
“Adam,” said Phipps, somewhat huskily, “I have been waiting for something—I never knew what—to come along and start me off after the fortune I have promised to get for the wife.”
“You are fortune enough for me, dear,” Mrs. Phipps interposed, in spite of herself. “I should be satisfied to live like this forever.”