“I thought you were dead, Matthew.”
“I know ye did, Dicky. Nor more isn’t that very astonishing seeing as I thought I were dead myself. It was a cunning move of yourn, Dicky, that ’ere sheering off in Jamestown. It was a clever trick, when you thought you’d quit being a gentleman of fortune, to leave me laying low with Yellow Jack, and not a single golden George to so much as spit on, not a single golden George to get me clear of Virginia and the tobacco planters. And I was took, Dicky. I was took all right and sold five hundred miles up country, to a Frenchman whose throat I slit so as he died quicker nor ever you’d think a man could die.”
“Mr. Tripconey,” said his lordship to me, “I think you’ll find your bedroom prepared. Springle, show Mr. Tripconey to his chamber.”
The butler, with many a backward glance to where the two sea-captains sat facing one another in the firelight, led me up the wide stairs and parted from me by the door of my room without so much as a good night.
Now whether the wicked flavour of Captain Swall’s conversation had fascinated my imagination, or whether the Burgundy had fired my blood with an inquisitiveness foreign to my nature, I do not know, but for the life of me I could not help wondering how it fared with the party downstairs. I resented being shut up out of sight and sound in this gaunt bedchamber; and at last, no longer able to bear my ignorance, I snuffed the candle and crept barefooted along the black corridor as far as the opening to the hall. Here, by kneeling close to the wall and peering through the balustrade, I could see and hear all that was happening below. I ran but small risk of discovery; for, as I reasoned, it would be easy to gain my room noiselessly while any one from below was ascending the stairs.
Lord Cannebrake and his visitor were still seated facing one another, while Springle was standing, well out of the way of both, at the farther end of the hall.
“But I don’t want to fight, Dicky,” Captain Swall was saying. “I done with fighting long ago. This here pop I holds in my hand so pretty, that’s not for fighting; that’s for protection, Dicky, in case you was to leave me once again on a lee-shore. No, I don’t want no revenge nor nothing, Dicky. But seeing as how I’m tired of roaming, and finds it dull at the Prospect of Whitby down by Wapping Stairs, I’ve a mind to sling my hammock in Cannebrake.”
“So you think you’re going to live at my expense, do you?” asked his lordship grimly. “But you’re not. I don’t feed ruffians like you, Matthew Swall.”
“Turned pious, have ye?” sneered the other. “Took to religion, maybe? Changed the name of your ship? That’s a main unlucky thing to do, and by——” He swore an abominable oath. “By—— it won’t go down with me, not with old Matthew. Springle, my lad, it looks as if you was ship’s cook aboard here. Let’s see the quality of your beef.”
I could not help feeling greatly delighted by Mr. Springle’s discomfiture as he stood there in a fine quandary.