"I?" Machin cried, stung out of his taciturnity. And he rose with an air of menace from his seat. "Let me tell you, sir, that I fling back the insinuation!"
But the Colonel refused to listen. He proceeded as if the other were not speaking. "You, reverend sir, yourself," he continued, "you too know, and well, on what you are embarking, its prospects and the issue for you, if it fail. But, you—I give you credit for it—are by your profession and choice devoted to a life of danger. You are willing, day by day and hour by hour, to run the risk of death. But these, my cousin there"—looking with a kind eye at Flavia—"she——"
"Leave me out!" she cried passionately. And she rose to her feet, her face on fire. "I separate myself from you! I, for my part, ask no better than to suffer for my country!"
"She thinks she knows, but she does not know," the Colonel continued quietly, unmoved by her words. "She cannot guess what it is to be cast adrift—alone, a woman, penniless, in a strange land. And yet that at the best—and the worst may be unspeakably worse—must be her fate if this plot miscarry! For others, The McMurrough and his friends yonder"—he indicated the group by the window—"they also are ignorant."
The McMurrough sprang to his feet, spluttering with rage. "D—n you, sir, speak for yourself!" he cried.
"They know nothing," the Colonel continued, quite unmoved, "of that force against which they are asked to pit themselves, of that stolid power over sea, never more powerful than now! And so to pit themselves, that losing they will lose their all!"
"The saints will be between us and harm!" the eldest of the O'Beirnes cried, rising in his wrath. "It's speak for yourself I say too!"
"And I!"
"And I!" others of the group roared with gestures of defiance. "We are not the boys to be whistled aside! To the devil with your ignorance!"
And one, stepping forward, snapped his fingers close to the Colonel's face. "That for you!—that for you!" he cried. "Now, or whenever you will, day or night, and sword or pistol! To the devil with your impudence, sir; I'd have you know you're not the only man has seen the world! The shame of the world on you, talking like a schoolmaster while your country cries for you, and 'tis not your tongue but your hand she's wanting!"