“They are those of my crew who have no taste for King James's service, and have preferred to seek work of other kinds. It was in our compact, my lord, that there should be no constraining of my men.”
“I don't remember it,” said his lordship, with sincerity.
Blood looked at him in surprise. Then he shrugged. “Faith, I'm not to blame for your lordship's poor memory. I say that it was so; and I don't lie. I've never found it necessary. In any case ye couldn't have supposed that I should consent to anything different.”
And then the Deputy-Governor exploded.
“You have given those damned rascals in Tortuga this warning so that they may escape! That is what you have done. That is how you abuse the commission that has saved your own neck!”
Peter Blood considered him steadily, his face impassive. “I will remind you,” he said at last, very quietly, “that the object in view was—leaving out of account your own appetites which, as every one knows, are just those of a hangman—to rid the Caribbean of buccaneers. Now, I've taken the most effective way of accomplishing that object. The knowledge that I've entered the King's service should in itself go far towards disbanding the fleet of which I was until lately the admiral.”
“I see!” sneered the Deputy-Governor malevolently. “And if it does not?”
“It will be time enough then to consider what else is to be done.”
Lord Julian forestalled a fresh outburst on the part of Bishop.
“It is possible,” he said, “that my Lord Sunderland will be satisfied, provided that the solution is such as you promise.”