The elaborate courtesy of those grossly inaccurate terms did not seem to touch the ponderous Easterling. His bold, craftily set eyes stared blankly from his great red face. He mopped the sweat from his brow before replying.
«You'll take your leave?» There was a sneering undertone to his guttural voice. «I'll trouble you in turn to be plain with me. I likes plain men, and plain words. D'ye mean that ye'll quit from the business?»
Two or three of his followers made a rumbling challenging echo to his question.
Captain Blood — to give him now the title Easterling had bestowed upon him — had the air of being intimidated. He hesitated, looking as if for guidance to his companions, who returned him only uneasy glances.
«If,» he said at length, «you find our terms unreasonable, I must assume ye'll not be wishing to go further, and it only remains for us to withdraw.»
He spoke with a diffidence which amazed his own followers, who had never known him other than bold in the face of any odds. It provoked a sneer from Easterling, who found no more than he had been expecting from a leech turned adventurer by circumstances.
«Faith, Doctor,» said he, «ye were best to get back to your cupping and bleeding, and leave ships to men as can handle them.»
There was a lightning flash from those blue eyes, as vivid as it was transient. But the swarthy countenance never lost its faint air of diffidence. Meanwhile Easterling had swung to the Governor's representative, who sat on his immediate right.
«What d'ye think of that, Mossoo Joinville?»
The fair, flabby young Frenchman smiled amiably upon Blood's diffidence. «Would it not be wise and proper, sir, to hear what terms Captain Easterling now proposes?»