‘But, Captain Hayston, it is my right to pay everything which this affair has cost. I shall have funds when I arrive in England. My credit, indeed, is good at this moment in Lombard Street—I insist——’
‘In this charter party, I only know Lytton Carteret, and must decline to mix up business with Señor Carlos Alvarez, or any friend or relative. It can be settled with him only after I fulfil my contract; but, until then, I must decline—much as it grieves me—to consider you in any other capacity than as my passenger. From that time forward we shall be friends, I trust?’
‘Have it your own way, Captain Hayston,’ said Lilburne, inwardly smiling at the idea of the buccaneer, as he was often held to be, being scrupulous about extra payment for service rendered. ‘In all other respects I shall always regard you as a friend in need, to be trusted in fair weather or foul, to my life’s end.’ Here he grasped the Captain’s sinewy hand, and shook it with a fervour commensurate with the importance of the occasion.
‘Buon amigo—malo adversario,’ replied Hayston. ‘We shall be unlikely to meet again; though, but for hard luck, and the mystery of fate, you and I, and your friend—a man whom I [202] ]honour and respect from the bottom of my heart—might have been comrades to our lives’ end.’
‘And why not now? Surely it is not too late—why not change your career? Why not uproot the ties and habits of early youth—atone for the mistakes—crimes, if you will—of a reckless manhood?—retrace the downward path—repent in sackcloth and ashes—a white sheet, if you like.’
‘Fancy “Bully” Hayston in a white sheet!’ The absurdity of the situation seemed to strike him, and he laughed till the tears came into his eyes. ‘No,’ and a sad, stern look came over his changeful brow—‘what says Byron, whom I used to read in my youth?
‘In fierce extremes—in good and ill.
But still we love even in our rage,
And haunted to our very age
With the vain shadow of the past,