«Now what the devil do you mean by that, Captain Pike, if you please?»
«It's an imputation,» said Galloway dryly. «A nasty imputation.»
«No imputation at all,» said Pike. «It's a fact.»
«A fact, eh?» Easterling was smiling, and the lean, tough, resolute Pike grew uneasy under that smile. Galloway's bright little ape's eyes were considering him oddly. The very air of that untidy, evil–smelling cabin became charged with menace. Pike had a vision of brutalities witnessed in the course of his association with Easterling, wanton, unnecessary brutalities springing from the sheer lust of cruelty. He recalled words in which Captain Blood had warned him against association with a man whom he described as treacherous and foul by nature. If he had hugged a doubt of the deliberate calculation by which is own men had been sacrificed on Darien, that doubt was now dispelled.
He was as a sleepwalker who awakens suddenly to find himself on the edge of a precipice into which another step must have projected him. The instinct of self–preservation made him recoil from an attitude of truculence which might lead to his being pistolled on the spot. He pushed back the hair from his moist brow and commanded himself to answer in level tones.
«What I mean is that if my men have been reduced, they've suffered this in the common cause. They will consider it unfair to break the articles on any such grounds.»
He argued on. He reminded Easterling of the practice of matelotage among buccaneers, whereby every man enters into a partnership with another in which the two make common cause and under which each is the other's heir. In this alone lay reason why many of his men who were to inherit should feel defrauded by any change in the articles.
Easterling's evil grin gave way again to a scowl. «What's it to me what any of your mangy followers may feel? I'm admiral of this fleet, and my word is law.»
«So it is,» said Pike. «And your word is in the articles under which we sailed with you.»
«To hell with the articles!» roared Captain Easterling.