Kit. You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head all the same. I’ll take threats from nobody, blind or not. Let’s knock up the Admiral and be done with it. What I want is to get rid of this dark lantern. It makes me feel like a housebreaker, by George.
Pew (seated on chest). You follow this. I’m sick of drinking bilge, when I might be rolling in my coach, and I’m dog-sick of Jack Gaunt. Who’s he to be wallowing in gold, when a better man is groping crusts in the gutter and spunging for rum? Now, here, in this blasted chest, is the gold to make men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin’s too—things that if I had the proof of ’em I’d hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I’d have done it single-handed; but I’m blind, worse luck: I’m all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick—Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That’s why I raked up you. Come, out with your iron, and prise the lid off. You shall touch your snack, and have the wench for nothing; ay, and fling her in the street, when done.
Kit. So you brought me here to steal, did you?
Pew. Ay did I; and you shall. I’m a biter: I bring blood.
Kit. Now, Pew, you came here on my promise, or I’d kill you like a rat. As it is, out of that door! One, two, three (drawing his cutlass), and off!
Pew (leaping at his throat and with a great voice). Help! murder! thieves!
SCENE III
To these, Arethusa, Gaunt, with lights. Stage light, Pew has Kit down, and is throttling him
Pew. I’ve got him, Cap’n. What, kill my old commander, and rob him of his blessed child? Not with old Pew!
Gaunt. Get up, David; can’t you see you’re killing him? Unhand, I say.