“Laugh as you will,” said Cleveland, “it is true;—there is a maiden who is contented to love me, pirate as I am; and I will fairly own to you, Jack, that, though I have often at times detested our roving life, and myself for following it, yet I doubt if I could have found resolution to make the break which I have now resolved on, but for her sake.”
“Why, then, God-a-mercy!” replied Bunce, “there is no speaking sense to a madman; and love in one of our trade, Captain, is little better than lunacy. The girl must be a rare creature, for a wise man to risk hanging for her. But, harkye, may she not be a little touched, as well as yourself?—and is it not sympathy that has done it? She cannot be one of our ordinary cockatrices, but a girl of conduct and character.”
“Both are as undoubted as that she is the most beautiful and bewitching creature whom the eye ever opened upon,” answered Cleveland.
“And she loves thee, knowing thee, most noble Captain, to be a commander among those gentlemen of fortune, whom the vulgar call pirates?”
“Even so—I am assured of it,” said Cleveland.
“Why, then,” answered Bunce, “she is either mad in good earnest, as I said before, or she does not know what a pirate is.”
“You are right in the last point,” replied Cleveland. “She has been bred in such remote simplicity, and utter ignorance of what is evil, that she compares our occupation with that of the old Norsemen, who swept sea and haven with their victorious galleys, established colonies, conquered countries, and took the name of Sea-Kings.”
“And a better one it is than that of pirate, and comes much to the same purpose, I dare say,” said Bunce. “But this must be a mettled wench!—why did you not bring her aboard? methinks it was pity to baulk her fancy.”
“And do you think,” said Cleveland, “that I could so utterly play the part of a fallen spirit as to avail myself of her enthusiastic error, and bring an angel of beauty and innocence acquainted with such a hell as exists on board of yonder infernal ship of ours?—I tell you, my friend, that, were all my former sins doubled in weight and in dye, such a villainy would have outglared and outweighed them all.”
“Why, then, Captain Cleveland,” said his confident, “methinks it was but a fool’s part to come hither at all. The news must one day have gone abroad, that the celebrated pirate Captain Cleveland, with his good sloop the Revenge, had been lost on the Mainland of Zetland, and all hands perished; so you would have remained hid both from friend and enemy, and might have married your pretty Zetlander, and converted your sash and scarf into fishing-nets, and your cutlass into a harpoon, and swept the seas for fish instead of florins.”