“I picture ’em,” he croaked, chuckling, “thinking me dying. Plotting mutiny, and robbing me of what I have; thinking to lay hands on what they’ve itched for all these years.”
“Sir, you agitate yourself unnecessarily,” Charles protested. “Let me ring for Thrale to help you to bed.”
“No. I’ll have the boy by me. Richard’s son. Hey, Bradbury, you’re going and will soon be back?”
“Immediately I have carried out your instructions, Mr. Craike,” said Mr. Bradbury.
“Ay, and you’ll be careful lest Charles or any of ’em seek to rob you by the way,”—chuckling to himself.
“Sir, you wrong me cruelly,” said Charles.
“Take a message down to ’em, Charles,” said the old man malignantly. “This from me—two words, ‘Not yet!’”—and chuckled still; and huskily went on, “Not a night in all my years of sailing they’d not have made an end of me, had they known me sick and broken as they think me now. If I’d have died to-night, they’d have been drunk by now on the best from my cellars; they’d have been searching all over the house for what they’ll never get. Give ’em the words from me, Charles! Not yet!”
“And pray give them this from me, Mr. Charles—under authority from their master,” cried Mr. Bradbury, “that with this night there’s an end of their doings in this house. Tell them that, though I go, I return to make an end!”
“You go!” my uncle repeated, smiling on Mr. Bradbury, “and you return! Surely, Bradbury.”
I had a notion instantly that he contemplated directing attack on Mr. Bradbury, believing that the gentleman bore with him the secret of my grandfather’s hoard—if there were hoard. Or, indeed, that my uncle had remained downstairs after us to give instructions to the stouter rogues.