‘It was on business, I think, that you had to speak to me?’ said Lord Harrogate cheerfully.
‘Business, I guess, can be of more sorts than one,’ rapped out the seaman argumentatively. ‘To reeve a rope for a rogue’s neck is one sort o’ business; and to clinker on the irons of the chain-gang at Perth, W. A., or Bermuda, or Gib (I’ve seen the convicts most everywhere; though, mind ye, I never wore the Queen’s canary-suit), is another. Rough customers are most of those that get a sentence of penal servitude. It’s on a gentleman—say on Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet—the punishment falls the heaviest.’
‘What do you mean? Or by what right do you drag the name of a landed gentleman of high position into your rambling talk?’ asked Lord Harrogate, very sternly.
Hold, as though the young man’s severe demeanour had excited instead of sobering him, broke into a crowing laugh of scorn. ‘That mealy-mouthed hypocrite!’ he exclaimed; ‘and he, forsooth, is a gentleman of high position, to play skipper to my swabber, I suppose, though I’ve more pluck in my little finger than Sir Sykes Denzil, Baronet, has in his whole body. It isn’t to a poor young thing—and she a widow and a lady—I’d owe a grudge, and still less to an innocent baby-girl that had no more harmed him than—— If it were all to come over again, I’m as certain as I stand here that I’d have gone to that young Lady Harrogate herself, and said’——
Something here seemed to flit across Hold’s clouded mind, for he started, bit his lip, and became silent.
‘Did you know that young Lady Harrogate of whom you have made mention, and who has been long dead?’ asked Lord Harrogate encouragingly.
‘Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t,’ grudgingly returned Richard, whose vein of communicativeness no longer flowed freely. ‘I’ve had sunstroke, mister, and knocks on the head too, on the topsy-turvy side of the world, that ought to excuse me if I talk a bit wild when I get liquor aboard. I’m Jack Ashore. Nobody minds a sailor.’
It was in vain that Lord Harrogate plied him with questions. A change had come over the man’s mood, and his dogged caution was as prominent as had lately been his garrulous bravado. It was evident that he regretted his recent avowal, and that being unable to recall it, he would say no more. Then came muffled noises from without, a single low roll of the drum, and the passing of the word from man to man.
‘The brigade to which you are attached, Lord Harrogate, is to get under arms and march at once,’ said an aide-de-camp, putting his head into the canvas doorway of the tent. ‘“Quick and silent,” are Lord Moffat’s orders.’
‘You must make your mind up, Mr Hold,’ said the young lord, as he caught up his sword and buckled it on, ‘as to whether you prefer to speak, or to have had your journey for nothing.’